


Bad Decisions Make Great Stories

by sexywhales



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: AU of some sort, Adventure, Angels, Bite Kink, Blood Kink, Bubbline more on the side, Demons, Depression, F/M, Fionna is literally a cake with legs, I don't know what the hell this is, Marshall Lee's A+ relationship skills, Vampires, fiolee, magic and other things that don't listen to physics, mentions of death and suicide, mentions of drug use, really really nice legs though, slight dubcon-ish kind of, some weird interdimensional business, this started as a drabbley idea and then got really big, weird but not as weird as it could be but still kind of weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-10 22:36:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 63,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexywhales/pseuds/sexywhales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fionna didn't know what to expect when she walked into the bar that night, but it certainly wasn't some suave 2000 year old demon lord putting the moves on her. "I live off of pain, anger, blood, and sex; please, honey, take your pick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Devil at the Bar

**Author's Note:**

> So I have (the beginnings of) this story up on FF already but I figured I could try and expand my audience a little bit and post it up hither, too, since there's not a great deal of FioLee here anyway. 
> 
> So yeah this is just some crack-tastic thing I whipped up on a whim like a month ago or something. It pretends to have a plot. I don't even.
> 
> Well anyway, from Fionna's POV.

I had a long history of making bad decisions.

When I was seven, I thought it would be fun to see how many dinosaur toys I could stick in my mouth at once. I had a lot of dinosaurs, and they were all rather small. Once I got to around twelve, I realized that they’d gotten stuck and I couldn’t move my jaw. I came crying to my mother, eyes streaming and drool running all down my shirt. She had to pry them out with a pair of tweezers, all the while trying not to laugh and cry at the same time. When my dad came home, my mom told him about it, and he wouldn’t let it go for a month.

When I was ten, I tried to shave the cat. Cake wasn’t very happy with me, and I ended up with a scratch down the middle of my face.

When I was thirteen, I tried jumping off of the roof onto my trampoline, after I saw some video on the internet. I was launched over our fence and into to our neighbor’s pool next door. They were sure surprised to see me.

When I was seventeen, my older brother, Finn, bet me to bike up a ramp he made over a trashcan. I made it, but immediately plunged into the grass beside our house and skinned the side of my knee. I won the bet, at least, so I consider that one worth it.

And now, here I was, standing in front of the most popular club in town, _The Night_.

 

My best friend Bonnie, supposedly the level-headed one in my group, her girlfriend Marcie, and my other friend Lola had taken me here just the other night. It was supposed to be a fun girl’s night out, in honor of my recent twenty-first birthday.

My heart pounded to the beat of the heavy bass seeping through the walls, as we flashed our I.D.’s to the bouncer and walked inside. All around were people dancing and people drinking and people chatting at oversized booths. I’d snuck into clubs before and gone to college nights and the like, so it wasn’t like I was in any foreign territory, but this would be my first time clubbing legally, though, to be perfectly honest, I missed the rush of barely getting past the front doors, stealing drinks, and dancing with strangers.

“C’mon, Fi!” Marcie yelled, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Wipe that dead look off your face and wake up! Bonbon and Lulu and I are dancing!”

I could barely hear her over the blaring music—hell, the music was so loud I felt it in my bones—but I smiled and ran after her anyway. I moved my body with the music and smiled as Bonnie and Marcie danced stupidly with each other. They were the cutest couple in the world, in my opinion. Bonnie had bright pink hair that was pulled back to show off a tattoo of a lollipop on the back of her neck and was wearing a lacy, pink, form-fitting dress, while Marcie had pitch black hair hanging down raggedly and two hoop piercings on her bottom lip with a simple black tank top, shorts, and strappy heels. Bonnie also had a light tattoo of angel wings going across her shoulders, while Marcie had bat wings adorning her own back. They were like inverses of the same person.

Meanwhile, Lola was dancing next to me, her curly blonde hair bouncing and strapless purple dress hugging her waist. She was very curvy, and always made every effort to show it off. She made the three of us look like sticks in comparison, another thing she tried to make as obvious as possible, but her energy, at least, was infectious, and she knew how to have fun at a party.

We danced for a few songs before deciding to take a break and grab a booth and order some drinks. Marceline was actually a regular at the club, so all of the waitresses knew her. A woman with light ginger hair and freckles came to our table soon after we sat down.

“Hey, Berry, how are you tonight?” Marcie asked pleasantly.

“I’m fine, and you?” the waitress replied.

“Wonderful. Just taking my recently-legalized friend out for a night on the town,” Marcie said, leaning her shoulder up against mine.

“How fun! Well, can I get you anything to drink?”

Marceline ordered something for each of us and a slice of cheesecake “to share”, she said, as long as she got the strawberries.

We chatted and laughed and drank strange martinis and ate cheesecake and I was having a great time. But I couldn’t shrug this feeling that I had, that there was someone watching me from afar. I kept looking around the room, and that was when I saw him. He sat in the very back corner of the room, past all of the throbbing bodies on the dance floor, surrounded by people. I only caught sight of him for a second, but I knew he was the one staring at me the moment I saw him.

Marceline snapped her fingers in front of my face.

“Helloooo? Earth to Fionna, what’s up with you? You’ve been super spacey for the past twenty minutes. What’s up?” she said.

I smiled and shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry,” I said, “I must be tired, I guess.”

“C’mon, Fi, tell us what’s up. This is supposed to be a night for you, after all,” Bonnie insisted.

I shrugged again. “I dunno. I think I’m bored.”

Lola giggled and winked. “Little Fi’s looking for an ‘adventure,’ huh?” she jabbed, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Oh, shut up. Can’t you keep your pervy thoughts to yourself for once?” I laughed.

“Come on, with that dress you’re wearing? You’re showing more cleavage than I am”

I sat up self-consciously and blushed a little, but the dim lighting hid it from view.

“No, I think Lola’s right. We need to hook Fionna up tonight,” Marceline said.

I blushed harder and hid my face.

“Guys, chill out. You’re embarrassing her,” Bonnie said, elbowing Marcie and Lola in their sides.

Just then, our waitress appeared, holding a tall glass in her hand. “Here you go, miss,” she said, setting the drink down in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked, skewing up my eyebrows.

“Strawberry vodka spritzer,” she said.

“I didn’t order anything.”

“Somebody must have their eyes on you, then,” she said with a wink. “Don’t worry, I mixed it myself,” she assured, before turning and walking away with a smile.

I glanced around the table, meeting faces full of smiles. I sighed before returning the grin and taking the drink.

“I wonder who’s got their eyes on little Fionna,” Lola marveled, “I bet he’s a cutie.”

“Or a super nerd,” Marcie joked.

“Oh, stop it, you guys. Just let me enjoy my free drink,” I said, taking a sip. It was very sweet; I could barely taste the alcohol in it.

After finishing my mystery drink, we decided to go dancing again. Lola was determined to dance with every guy in the entire club, and Bonnie and Marcie decided to send me off to look for my mystery man. I rolled my eyes at the suggestion but made my way into the mass of people anyway, my hand on my phone in the pocket of my dress. (Dress pockets are great.)

I joined a group of people dancing in a circle for a few songs, but I still couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was being watched. It wasn’t a particularly unsettling feeling, just something that I couldn’t help but notice. I quietly slid away from the group and set off toward the back corner of the club, not entirely sure of what I’d find.

There he was. His gaze was unmistakable. We locked eyes and I found myself moving toward him, steps still matched to the beat of the music. He was surrounded by women, six of them, each struggling against the other to get closer to the man. His hair was dark, barely catching reflections from the flashing lights overhead, and his skin looked to be rather pale. He wore a black suit with the first three buttons of his shirt undone, and I fought hard not to stare at any one place for too long. There was one feature of his that I always came back to, though, and that was his eyes. Even in the low, changing lighting, I could see that they were the brightest shade of crimson. They seemed to lure me in, and I was standing right in front of the man before I knew it.

At the blink of his eyes, the women around him disbanded, as if affected by a spell. I watched them fearfully as they brushed by me, but stood still in my place.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, his voice a deep growl.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He ignored my question. “Did you like the drink?” he asked instead

“It was a bit sweet for my tastes,” I replied.

“Oh, a taste for the stronger flavors have we?” he remarked, smirking darkly.

“I’ll take a shot of bourbon over a mixed drink any day. You could say I’m a purist,” I said.

He flashed me another smile, revealing a set of too-white teeth. “Come, sit,” he said beckoning me forward.

“I’m fine standing, thanks.”

“Cautious, are we? Tell me, what’s your name,” the man hissed smoothly.

“I’m Fionna.”

“It’s nice to meet you, _Fionna_ ,” he said, tasting my name and letting it swirl sensually on his tongue.  “I’m Marshall. Marshall Lee Abadeer.”

He held his hand out and I shook it. “A pleasure,” I said. His nails were long and painted black; he grazed my hand lightly as he let go of the handshake. I suppressed a shiver.

A buzzing in my pocket told me that my friends were looking for me. I reached for my phone, my gaze never wavering from his, then looked down to check the message.

“My friends are looking for me,” I said.

Marshall looked up at me through hooded eyes. “It’s a shame; we’ve only just met,” he said in his low, soothing voice. “You’ll have to come see me again.” I could have sworn I saw his eyes dilate as he spoke, but I told myself it was just the light.

I flashed him a smile and waved. “We’ll see.”

 

I was alone. It was a drizzly Thursday night, almost a week since the last night out, and I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since. I didn’t know how long I’d been standing at the door, staring at the glowing sign overhead. Water had soaked through to my scalp and beaded up all over my skin, but I was sure he wouldn’t care. I steeled my resolve and walked inside.

It wasn’t nearly as crowded as it had been the last time, as was to be expected on a rainy weekday, but there was still a steady enough flow of people. Several couples sat at booths to my right and at least a few groups were standing around on the dance floor. I swiftly made my way to the back of the room.

There he was. He sat in the same spot as the last time. The two women on his either side disbanded as soon as they caught sight of me. I watched them go with hard eyes, and they glared right back. Marshall gave a tiny smirk at the exchange but nothing more. He wore a maroon suit coat and a black button-up underneath.

“You finally came,” he said, looking bored.

“I don’t know why,” I said.

“Because I told you to,” he replied quickly, glancing up at me, his unreal eyes dilating.

I narrowed my eyes at him, tilting my head. “Who do you think you are?” I said.

He was standing in front of me, lightning fast; I jumped back in surprise. He stood almost two heads taller than me. His figure wasn’t wide, but it wasn’t narrow either. He grabbed my chin and forced me to meet his eyes. Suddenly, the world around us stopped, darkening to shades of black and red.

“You want to know who I am?” he said softly, before smiling fully. I gasped at his teeth, eyes widening at the sight of two pointed canines.

“V-Vampire?!” I gasped.

His face fell and he shook his head in mock disappointment. “ _Vampire_?” he asked incredulously. “I would hate to be associated with such lowly, disgusting creatures,” he hissed. He pulled my face up closer to his, hovering his mouth over mine. “No, I’m not just any vile little _vampire_ ,” he growled. “I am a son of Lucifer.”

I gasped again and pulled away, pulse racing and palms sweating. The world around us began to move again, but in slow motion.

“How are you doing this?” I said softly.

“What, this?” he asked, glancing around the room as low beats pulsed through it. “Just a little trick of the mind. Nothing more than… adjusting your perception on the world a little.”

I tried. I tried with every fiber of my being to be afraid of this man, but I couldn’t. I could not bring myself to fear him. Where I sought terror I only found wonder.

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“You think so?” he replied, unable to hide a glint in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said, looking around at the people, moving so slowly they were next to motionless, as another beat vibrated through me.

“I’d love to show you more,” he said. I swore I saw his eyes darkening.

“Would you?”

“For a price.”

I shifted my weight and crossed my arms over my chest. “What kind of price?”

“I live off of pain, anger, blood, and sex; please, honey, take your pick.”


	2. Secrets Best Not Kept

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I decided to just go ahead and catch this one up to what I have on FF. Enjoy!

“YOU DID _WHAT_?”

I was telling Bonnie and Marceline about my endeavors from the previous night. They were both rather attentive as I told them about encountering Marshall Lee; however Bonnie was a little less receiving than her darker counterpart.

“Whoa whoa whoa okay, back up,” Bonnie was saying, holding her forehead and rubbing her temples. “So you mean to tell me that you, what, met some _demon_ —”

“Son of Lucifer,” I corrected.

“ _Whatever_ ,” she sighed. “Anyway, you met this guy with red eyes and freaky teeth, surrounded by women, who grabbed your freaking face and ‘stopped time,’ or some shit, around you to have this weird-ass conversation with you about, fucking hell, our lord and savior Satan or whatever—”

“That’s not what we talked about,” I interjected.

“And you were just so fascinated by the conversation and his little parlor tricks—“

“I’m pretty sure it was real.”

“That you asked him about them, and then he offered to show you more in exchange for _sex_ —”

“Or something else.”

“And you said _maybe_.”

“Well, aside from all of your creative inserts, that about sums it up,” I said.

Bonnie buried her head in her knees and groaned. “Demons, vampires, trippy time hallucinations, are you sure this guy didn’t just spike your drink or something?”

I crossed my arms. “I know better than to fall for that,” I defended. “Besides, I didn’t have a drink.”

“Maybe you don’t remember it.”

I shot her a look.

Meanwhile, Marceline was sitting beside Bonnie, legs crossed, seemingly lost in thought.

“Marcie, what do you think?” Bonnie asked, exasperated.

Marceline sighed and shook her head. “I think we should tell her, Bonbon,” she said.

“What?” Bonnie looked at her with confusion before a look of realization melted her facial features into a fearfulness.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

“We can’t just… tell her that!” Bonnie yelled.

“What? Tell me what?”

“Bonnie, it’s not like she’s some little girl. She can handle it,” Marcie said.

Bonnie glanced at me pitifully. “But she’s so… fragile.”

“If she’s enough for some Son of Lucifer to take interest in her, I’d hardly call her fragile.”

“What is it!?” I said, my voice rising.

“It’s been fine without her knowing all these years! Why do we have to change things?” Bonnie said exasperatedly.

“Bonnie, if we don’t tell her, she’ll just get deeper into this with no idea of what she’s getting herself into! Things have _changed_. We can’t just keep doing the same thing forever,” Marcie retorted.

“Just tell me what you guys are talking about!” I shouted.

“We’re not human, okay?!” Bonnie yelled.

I leaned back and stared at her.

Bonnie took a few deep breaths and calmed herself. She looked up sadly at Marceline, who winced slightly, but nodded for her to go on. “Marcie and I, we’re not human,” she said again.

“ _What_?” I said.

Marceline closed her eyes and composed herself. “I’m an angel,” she said. “Well, I’m a fallen angel. And Bonnie, here, is a demon.”

I felt my jaw drop, and couldn’t bring myself to pick it back up. I stared at the two girls like their hair had turned into snakes. It may as well _have_.

Bonnie looked concerned and started to wave her hand in front of my face, but I didn’t move.

“Hey, Fi, are you okay?” she asked, softly shaking my shoulder.

I shook my head slowly.

Bonnie chanced a glare at Marceline. “I told you she wasn’t ready,” she said.

I blinked slowly and tried to straighten out my expression, which worked, partially. “So you’re saying you guys… aren’t, like… people.”

“Well, I mean, come on. We may be defined as evil spirits but that doesn’t make us heartless _creatures_ ,” Marcie said. “But no, like she said, we’re not humans.”

I stared at them for a while and processed. “Your… back tattoos are very ironic then,” I said.

Marcie couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Well, yeah, that’s part of the reason we got them,” she giggled. “Angels don’t have wings, though. That’s just some mortal thing you kids made up a couple thousand years ago.”

“Uh-huh,” I said slowly, nodding. “So, like… how old are you guys, then?”

“Marcie is about five-hundred, give or take, so she’s still pretty young. I was ‘born’ in the dark ages so I’m closer to one-thousand,” Bonnie explained.

“Wait so like… okay… I think I’m starting to process all of this and stuff so… I mean, expect a lot of questions to come spewing out of my mouth right now, okay?” I said.

Bonnie and Marcie nodded together.

“Ohkay. Uhm, wow. Okay. Where do I start, oh god,” I sighed.

“Well if you’re gonna talk about God then you may as well speak to me first,” Marcie said.

“Wow, yeah, right, an angel. Okay, so, like, what kind of angel were you? And, wow, did you ever meet God? Why would you come down to Earth if you had all that you had as an angel?”

Bonnie and Marcie exchanged a glance. “Oh, dang, I forgot, there’s going to be a lot of extra explaining we need to do,” Bonnie said. “How about we just… start at the beginning?

“Okay, so first off, the universe is made up of several different dimensions, all existing right next to one another, but never touching. Whenever someone dies in one dimension, they move on to the next. It’s all very complicated, and it kind of gets a whole lot more complicated than that, but I’ll give you the simplified version. Above the dimension where earth is, is the dimension of the angels and demons. It’s actually more of an in-between dimension than anything else because it exists very closely with earth’s dimension, and most humans skip that realm and move on to either Aarseria or Ordolholm—I believe you call that Heaven and Hell?—instead of being reborn as angels and demons. The realm containing Earth has to be the most complicated of the dimensions, with all of the pathways converging toward and away from it.”

I nodded, thinking of my next question. “So how do demons and angels come into existence and down to earth, then?” I asked.

“See, the land of demons and angels is much more closely related to earth than the other realms,” Bonnie said. “They exist in some of the same space, but cannot feel or see one another. It’s actually more like Earth and Dӕmangia—that’s where we’re from—are twisted together instead of next to each other. Thus, things that happen on Earth affect things that happen in Dӕmangia and vice versa. So the way that a demon is born is when lots of people from your world harbor the same negative emotion. I was essentially born into Dӕmangia from the fear of the unknown, as I was created in the dark ages, and I also live off of that fear.” I stared at her bewilderedly. “Telling you about all of this right now is actually like a feast for me,” Bonnie added. I frowned, but couldn’t hide my slight amusement.

“Then what about angels?”

“Angels are a little different. See, where demons are born from negativity, angels are born from positivity,” Marceline, began. “Also, their purpose, or ‘job’ as you might call it, is affected by what they were born from. And to answer your previous question, no I have not met what you may call ‘God’. Only the eldest angels born from the most pure feelings of love and hope get to take that honor. I was an angel born from wisdom, from the age of Enlightenment, however, when I met Bonnie, I had my fall,” Marcie recalled, sadness clouding her eyes. “I used to thrive under the exchange of knowledge and enlightenment, but as a punishment for my crime, I feel only emptiness in the presence of wisdom.” Bonnie rested her arm around Marcie’s shoulders sympathetically and rested her cheek against Marcie’s hair. “So, unlike Bonnie, this conversation is rather draining,” she added.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I can stop if you need me to,” I said, sitting up a little straighter.

“No, no, it’s alright. It’s all stuff that you need to know. I might just… go stand outside for a little bit, though,” she said, standing up and clutching her head before walking out of the room.

“Will she be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. All she needs is a little downtime and some Toddlers and Tiaras and she’ll be fine,” Bonnie said. I smiled halfway.

“You never told me how you guys came to Earth,” I said.

“Oh, that.” Bonnie blushed slightly. “Well, when we met each other in Dӕmangia and started, you know, falling for each other, we were sort of banished from that realm,” she explained softly. “That’s how most demons and angels end up here, if they’re not visiting on business…” Bonnie trailed off, obviously consumed by some memory, though of what I could not tell. “A-anyway! What else do you need to know?”

“Um… tell me about the Sons of Lucifer.”

Bonnie’s face fell into a pondering grimace, her brows pushing together and hand coming up to scratch the back of her head. “Lucifer is a… complicated man,” Bonnie finally began.

“Apparently everything else you’ve been telling me this evening is pretty complicated, so I’m sure you can explain it.”

“Lucifer currently resides in the… Middle Dimension, I guess you could call it. It’s the dimension that links all other dimensions together. The people of Dӕmangia call it Midnaught Illiumin. Anyway, Lucifer sometimes comes down to the other dimensions to wreak havoc, and usually ends up getting more than a few women knocked up in the meantime with his… offspring.” Bonnie’s frown deepened and she shivered the slightest bit. “The women who survive give birth to his Sons, always sons, and they each have different attributes and abilities depending on the mother and the realm.”

“So do you know what that would mean for my… particular situation?”

Bonnie shook her head. “You’d have to ask the guy yourself. Though he sounds very powerful for being a Son born on Earth. I highly doubt his mother was of this realm, though Sons born in this realm do tend to have their abilities amplified to compensate for the usually weaker mothers.”

“Interesting…” was all I could say.

“I wouldn’t suggest talking to him again, though,” Bonnie said. “That man is a one-way ticket to Ordolholm, and there’s not a whole lot a human soul can do to move on from there.”

Bonnie and I stared at each other, and Bonnie sighed. “You know, I won’t be able to save your soul for you. Once you’re damned, you’re damned. In fact, you probably know too much already,” she said.

“May as well finish what I started, then,” I concluded.

Bonnie shook her head, almost sadly. “Your curiosity will be the death of you.”

“Why try and avoid the inevitable?” I asked, though it was more of a statement. I shrugged.

Marcie came back inside the room, staring at her phone. “Fionna, it’s almost two in the morning,” she said, sitting and putting her phone away. “I know you don’t have any classes on Friday, but I’m still pretty sure you humans need to sleep like the rest of us.”

“Oh, damn, I didn’t even notice the time,” I said, standing and stretching. “Well, um, thanks for the advice and stuff. I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow, err, later today!” I waved as I pulled on my shoes and saw myself out the door. My apartment complex was just a few streets away from Marcie and Bonnie’s. All three of us lived off-campus, but still close enough that we could walk to our classes. I was a junior and both Marcie and Bonnie were seniors, though, when I thought about it, I had no idea how long they’d actually been going to college, being immortal and all.

I made my way down the four flights of stairs to the street below and started down the block toward my apartment. I’d had to do this several times before, and the city was generally safe with low crime rates, so I wasn’t particularly worried.

Of course, I’d also never had the greatest luck when it came to decision-making.

As I rounded the first corner, I noticed a man standing on the opposite side of the street, ruddy complexion, wearing jeans and a light coat and smoking. He watched me go by and I averted his gaze, picking up my pace the slightest bit. I didn’t look behind me as I walked but by the second turn I could tell he was following me. His footsteps were muffled and matched to mine, but I knew; I could smell the lingering stench of his cigarette wafting toward me, hear his heavy breaths. I walked faster, trying to think of the first nearby public place I could tuck into, but it was two in the morning and nothing near my apartment would be open. I started running and I heard the man’s footsteps pick up behind me. Suddenly, hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a side ally. I tried to scream but my mouth was muffled by a pale hand. I turned back to meet a pair of glowing red eyes. My eyes widened in recognition as the tall man let go of me and held a finger to his lips as he walked back out to the street.

It was quiet for a moment, until I heard something let out a hiss. The most horrifying scream made me flinch; I scrunched my eyes closed and held my arms. A voice gurgled and cracked before stopping suddenly, and I peered around the corner of the alleyway. Marshall was nowhere to be seen, but the man that was following me lay in the middle of the street with a wooden spike sticking out of his chest. His eyes hung wide open, and blood oozed from his nose and mouth. His skin was a sickening, dirty violet, and inside his mouth was a pair of gnarly yellow fangs. I gasped and held my mouth as a fire began to spread from the stake in the man’s heart, consuming him in a flash of heat and smoke. He was gone in a matter of seconds. The road was free of any blood or scorch marks. It was as though he never existed.

“Vampire,” Marshall said from behind me, and I jumped at his arm around my shoulders.

I whirled around to face him. He wore the same suit from earlier that night, perfectly pressed and spotless. He stared at me lazily, like he was ready to pass out from boredom any second, and slid his free hand into his pocket as we stared at each other.

“What was he doing here?” I asked.

“I should be asking you the same question.” He kept the same smoothness in his voice as always, but I couldn’t help but sense… anger. “It doesn’t matter. Young humans such as yourself shouldn’t be out this late.” He let on the beginning of a smirk. “There are monsters that like to hunt at night.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Just passing through,” he said, pulling his hand back out and picking at his black fingernails. “Anyway, you should probably get going, before any other creature catches your _scent_.” He blinked slowly at me before taking his arm away and heading back toward the shadows. “Oh,” he stopped and cast his gaze over his shoulder, “and don’t forget our deal.”

He left me with his wicked smile etched into my mind. I shook my head to clear it and started running back to my apartment as fast as I could.


	3. Energy

I’d never been particularly powerful. I was hardheaded, stubborn at times, and independent, but never particularly… strong. I suppose it’s something that everyone thinks about, being influential, having might. I thought about it, too, sometimes. I guessed that was what attracted me to Marshall. He had something that I wanted, even though I chose not to admit it to myself.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

I woke up with a start. My clock told me that it was 4:30 a.m., meaning I’d only slept for two hours, but that wasn’t even the most ridiculous thing about that morning. No, the thing that got my blood pumping was the man leaning against the wall in the corner of my room, his crimson eyes glowing in the darkness.

I shot up. “M- _Marshall_?” I whispered, trying not to yell lest my neighbors get suspicious.

“Fionna,” Marshall said, voice careful and silken as usual.

“What are you doing in my apartment?” I hissed, pulling my blanket further up on my shoulders.

“I got impatient,” he said, pushing off of my wall and slinking toward my bed.

“For what?” I asked, trying to lower my guard.

He stood at the foot of my bed, eyeing me critically. “For you.” He was over me in a flash, one knee between my legs and arms trapping my shoulders. “I have a favor to ask,” he said, leaning down and putting his face next to my ear. “I assume your demon friend told you about me,” he whispered. His light stubble brushed the side of my face and made me shiver.

How could he know about that? I shook my head. “Maybe bits and pieces…,” I said. “She told me not to talk to you again.”

I felt him smile against my ear and lean back, staring into my eyes. “Oh? Did she say that? Tell me how that works out for you.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Do you know why I’m here?” he said suddenly.

“I… No, I don’t,” I confessed.

“There’s something that I need to do, but I need your help,” he said.

“Help from _me_? Why is that?” I asked.

“Well, really, any human would do,” he hummed. His eyes dilated. “But I’ve taken a particular liking to you.” He pushed a hand through his hair, looking down at me darkly.

“W-What are you trying to do?” I said.

“I’m going to kill the Devil,” he said, unblinking eyes boring down into me.

My breathing hitched. “How am I supposed to help you with that?”

He growled and leaned forward, once again trapping me with his hands. His lips were hovering over mine, and he sighed against my face; his breath was cool and smelled of wine. “You talk too much,” he breathed, pulling back again. “You do remember our deal, don’t you?”

“Y-Yes, I do.” To be honest, I hadn’t been entirely sure that he was being serious about our “deal” at the time, but I quickly realized that I my assumption was wrong.

“I need energy,” he said. “You can give that to me.” He looked down at me, mouth frowning, eyes smoldering. “So, you remember the options. What’ll it be?”

My eyes widened at him and I turned my head away, trying to hide my blush. “I don’t know. Surprise me,” I said.

Marshall smirked widely. He held my chin, forcing me to look at him, and snatched my lips with a kiss, slow but short. He kissed his way down my neck, tracing the tendons with his tongue, and I gasped slightly. He stopped right above my shoulder, and I felt the edges of sharp teeth press against me, not breaking the skin. I tensed. He hesitated. I felt a tiny nip on my collar bone and he sucked on the forming bruise.

“Do you ever have dreams of power?” he murmured against my skin. Everywhere he touched burned like ice on fire. I couldn’t think, and I wasn’t entirely sure why.

“W-What?” I asked.

“Aw, come on. Don’t be shy,” he said, fingers grazing softly at the hem of my tank top. “All mortals do.”

“I guess sometimes…” I admitted.

“I can give it to you,” he said, snapping his head up and staring at me straight on.

“You can…? How?” I asked skeptically.

“How about we make ourselves a bond? A pact, if you will,” he said, words like satin against soft skin. “You give me energy, and I’ll give you power. It’s really a win-win type situation, don’t you think?” He blinked slowly at me, reiterating the question.

I almost felt like I wasn’t in control of my own body. I wasn’t doing anything I didn’t want to be doing, I just felt detached.

“…Okay,” I said.

 That was all he needed. He tore my tank top from my body, throwing it somewhere else in the room, leaving me fully exposed. His mouth kissed down my torso while his hands slid down my sides, leaving no part of me untouched. His mouth reached my left hip bone, right above my shorts. He tugged at the edge of my shorts with his teeth, bringing them down a few inches before stopping abruptly, and returning to the skin next to my hip.

“Where it won’t be seen,” I heard him mumble, before biting me. His sharpened canines cut through my skin like butter and I gasped at the painful burning sensation that came with it. I could feel his teeth, just under my skin and just above the muscles underneath. He released me and started muttering something that didn’t sound like words—at least, not of any language that I knew of—and the burning increased. I bit back a scream as he licked the burning skin below him before turning away and getting up.

I grasped at my hip desperately, looking down to see the bite. The burning had stopped as soon as he licked the wound. There were no puncture marks on my skin; there was, however a perfect, upside-down, 7-pointed star in their stead.

“What—?”

“It’s a symbol of our pact,” Marshall explained before I could even ask my question. “Don’t let anyone see it,” he added. “It is for my eyes alone.” He leaned down and left me a kiss beside my mouth.

In a moment, he was gone.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

It was two o’clock in the afternoon when Bonnie and Marcie knocked my door down.

Well, I say “knocked down” but “knocked really, really loudly for an extended period of time” is probably more fitting.

I groaned and rolled out of bed, stumbling to my front door so I could shut up the girls outside.

“ _Fionna_ we thought you had _died_ we were knocking on the door for like five minutes and we called you at least twenty times and when you didn’t answer we were getting so worried I almost knocked down the door and Marcie was going to call the _police_ and—is that a hickey,” Bonnie said.

I looked down at my shoulder and sure enough there was a reddish bruise starting to form on my clavicle. “Well, shit,” I said, looking back up at Bonnie and Marcie.

“What the actual fuck were you doing last night?” Bonnie deadpanned. Marcie stood by with a look of amusement on her face.

“Uh.” It was all pretty hazy. I remembered being woken up in the wee hours of the morning, and then _something_ happened that I wasn’t completely aware for, and then I woke up again.

“‘Uh’? Think you’re just gonna satisfy us with an ‘ _uh_ ’?” Marcie said accusingly. “You’re gonna have to get a little more specific than that. C’mon Fifi, tell me his name.”

I stared at her blankly. “Uhhh.”

She sighed. “I guess you just woke up. All right, we’ll chill in your room while you wake yourself up a little more,” she said, letting herself inside with Bonnie in tow. I nodded and walked into my bathroom, turning on the faucet to wash my face. I combed out my hair and noticed I was still in my night clothes, so I pulled out a t-shirt to throw on with a pair of jeans. As I was taking off my shirt, I looked down and noticed the symbol on my hip. Memories flooded back to me as I fell back into the wall with a yelp.

“Fionna? Are you okay in there?” I heard Marcie call.

“Oh, heck. I-I’m fine!” I stuttered, standing myself up and quickly throwing on my shirt and pants.

Marceline showed up at my door right as I was buttoning my jeans. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little…” she trailed off as she looked me over. “Your shirt is on backwards,” she said.

I looked down and spat out a curse, tucking my arms in and twisting it around.

“What’s that?” Marcie said as I pushed my hands back out through the arm holes. I immediately pulled my shirt down over my hip. He said that no one else was allowed to see it.

“What’s what? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, holding my shirt as I walked out of my bathroom, brushing past Marcie on the way.

“Uh, no, wait up a second what was that on your hip?” she asked. I mentally sighed with relief when I knew that she hadn’t really seen the marking

“It’s nothing,” I insisted. “You’re just imagining things.” Bonnie walked in as I sat down on my bed, hand still grasping my shirt.

“What’s going on?” Bonnie asked.

“I saw some sort of marking on Fionna and she won’t tell me what it is,” Marcie explained. I crossed my arms self-consciously.

“Where was it?” Bonnie went on.

“On her hip. I just saw the edge of it, but it almost looked like a…” Marcie didn’t finish.

“Let me see it, Fionna,” Bonnie said sternly.

I shook my head. No one else was supposed to see it.

“Don’t make me force you.”

I continued to shake my head.

“All right, that’s it.” Bonnie started toward me and grabbed my arms. I tried to pull away, but she was surprisingly strong, and my struggling proved futile.

I started to panic a bit. _They can’t see it_ , I thought, over and over and over again. Bonnie managed to pull my arms away as Marcie reached for the edge of my shirt. In a rush of adrenaline-fueled panic, I yelled the first word that came to me. “ _Stamatibehre_!”

Bonnie and Marcie froze, and their grip slackened. I wriggled away and sat at the head of my bed, staring at the two motionless girls; even their hair was still. The only thing they could move was their eyes as they stared back at me with panic.

I gasped as I felt a nick on my wrist. I looked down and saw a small cut next to the vein, bleeding slowly and steadily.

After a few seconds, the girls fell, able to move again.

“What the _hell_ was that?!” Marcie screamed.

Bonnie stared at me, eyes impossibly wide. “Fionna, lower your hands, please,” she said. I looked down and saw that my hands were held in front of me, fingers outstretched. I closed them and put them by my sides

Marceline shot Bonnie a questioning face. Bonnie replied with a concerned gaze.

“What was that, Bonnie?” she asked.

“That was the language of magicians,” Bonnie said. “Fionna just cast a spell on us.”

Marcie looked at me with bewilderment and I returned it. “I-I don’t know how I did it,” I said defensively. “It just…”

Bonnie narrowed her eyes at me. “Fionna, your pupils are dilated,” she noted. Her eyes shot open. “Fionna, you’re under compulsion,” she said.

“W-what?”

“It was that Marshall Lee guy, wasn’t it? Fionna, did Marshall come here last night?”

I tried to answer her, but I couldn’t make myself speak.

“Shit,” Marcie said, “I guess you wouldn’t be able to tell us if you wanted to.”

I shot her an apologetic look.

She shook her head. “What the hell does that guy want with you?”

I stared down into my lap. “I… think he wants my help.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

Bonnie and Marcie charged into _The Night_ with a sense of purpose, dragging me along by my wrists. They’d barely waited for the sun to set to go to the club, but I insisted that Marshall wouldn’t be out and about during the daytime. They asked me how I knew that but I couldn’t answer them.

He sat in the same seat as always, however there was no one else at the table with him. He watched us expectantly, a wicked glint in his red eyes.

“What the fuck did you do to Fionna?” Marcie demanded, yelling over the music, which was just transitioning into the louder, more upbeat songs suited to a Friday night.

Marshall waited for us to come all the way over to him before answering. He held his chin up on loosely clasped hands, an empty glass below him. “Well, I’d tell you about it, but I’m guessing you already know,” he said, holding back a yawn.

“Stop messing with her and undo your compulsion,” Bonnie snapped.

Marshall looked up at her with a chuckle and a smile. “No,” he said.

“Why the fuck not?!” Marcie hissed.

“It’s just for that one, special little night,” he said, smirking deviously. “Besides, it’s a part of our pact,” he added, “You wouldn’t want poor Fionna to be subject to the aftermath of breaking a pact, would you?”

Marcie glared furiously at him.

“You two made a _pact_?” Bonnie snarled.

Marshall blinked slowly up at the two girls before sitting up straighter. “She’s an important piece of my puzzle,” he said. “In fact, I was hoping I could get all three of you together tonight; it seems you’ve saved me the trouble. I need a little something from all of you.” Marshall’s eyes seemed to glow brighter and the world around us slowed down to a stop, before starting to play in reverse. “I’m sure Fionna has been incapable of informing you herself, so you wouldn’t happen to know about my little plans.”

“W-what plans?” Bonnie stuttered, alarmed by the change in her perception.

“Oh, just me and a couple of friends—you could call them brothers, I suppose—taking care of some… family issues,” Marshall explained, picking at his nails. “I’ve finally finished the last of my preparations,” he said, glancing back up at us. “All I need to do is send out the signal, so that we may begin with our procession.”

Bonnie looked as though she was about to protest, but Marshall shushed her with his eyes. “The problem is, I need a little help to send out a signal across so many dimensions. You see, I don’t exactly know where my brothers are, at the moment. A signal like that requires a great deal of power—most of which, I assure you, I can provide—but, more importantly, it has some… _exotic_ ingredients.”

Bonnie and Marcie stiffened next to me. “Like what…?” she asked tentatively.

“It’s really nothing much,” he said, “In fact, it’s just three little things. And I happen to have all of them standing right in front of me.”


	4. The Devil Wears a Black Suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kidnapping, essentially

Marshall grinned wickedly at us. The world around us stopped and he snapped his fingers. We appeared in a dark room. I looked around wildly, taking in deep maroon walls, a dusty gray carpet, and a black table with a silver chalice sitting in the middle. The room was otherwise unadorned and there was no obvious door anywhere.

“H-How did we get here?” Bonnie asked, looking as alarmed as I felt.

“You walked,” Marshall said flatly. He turned around. “Come ‘ere,” he said, beaconing to us as he walked to the table. My feet obeyed while my mind struggled against him. Marcie and Bonnie seemed to be under the same spell as they clustered around him with me.

He grabbed Marcie by the hand and pulled her close to him. She whimpered helplessly, unable to pull away. “What’s wrong, darling?” he cooed.  He grabbed a lock of her hair and cut it off with his fingernail. Marcie looked confused. “This is natural, yes?” Marshall asked.

Marcie’s confusion grew. “Uh, yeah… it turned black when I fell,” she said.

Marshall let the hair fall into the chalice, smirking as he did so. “You didn’t really think I was going to hurt any of you, did you?” he said.

“Well, uh…” Marcie trailed off.

Marshall chucked.

I frowned

This little punk was messing with us.

Marshall pushed Marcie back with his gaze, then brought Bonnie forward. He took her wrist gingerly and held it up to his mouth, licking it. Bonnie shivered before he sliced his nail across her vein and held it over the chalice for the blood to drip down. Bonnie looked surprised but didn’t appear to be in pain. The wound closed in a few seconds and she backed away.

“Hair of an angel, blood of a demon,” Marshal said, sliding his eyes across each of us, “and skin of a witch.” I walked toward him, confused.

“But, I’m not a witch,” I said.

Marshall ignored me. “Some privacy,” he directed, and Bonnie and Marcie turned around. Marshall knelt down on his knees and pulled up the bottom of my dress—that Bonnie and Marcie had _forced_ me into before leaving, by the way, because of course we couldn’t go anywhere without the proper attire and anything less than this skin-tight towel of a dress was inferior and unacceptable—grazing his fingers along my skin as he did so. He brought his face to the seven-pointed star on my hip and licked it. I shivered, though whether it was from fear or something else was unbeknownst to me.

“As far as this spell is concerned,” Marshall whispered against my skin, “you’re a witch, at least right here.” He sank his razor-like teeth into my flesh, pulling away with a small triangle of skin. It was a surreal feeling. There was no pain, only pressure and a brief sense of emptiness before he licked the spot again and my skin began to regenerate. I watched in fascination before my dress was pulled back down for me. “ _Dispella_ ,” he said after adding the last of his ingredients to the chalice.

I felt as though a fog had been lifted. I was in charge of my own body parts again, and the events between being at the club and appearing in this room started coming back to me, albeit jumbled and overall less helpful than so.

“What the hell was all of that!?” Marceline obviously chose her first words very carefully.

But Marshall wasn’t paying attention to us anymore. He started murmuring a long string of syllables, eyes closed, hands held over the chalice. Smoke rose from the cup and swirled around between his fingers. Scratches began to form on his hands in the pattern of stars and spread slowly up his arms. The three of us stared in horrified awe as the scratches traveled up his neck and across his face and down his torso, stippling his shirt with dark spots of blood. His chanting grew louder and faster. The image was like something straight out of a horror movie. Thin trickles of blood flowed between cuts and across his skin like lava; he opened his eyes only for them to turn completely black. He looked possessed.

His mouth stopped suddenly. He let out a shaky breath as the smoke dissipated in a green flash that consumed the entire room.

He lowered his arms. His eyes opened slowly, and I was glad to see they had returned to normal. He rested them directly on me. His irises were dark, their brilliant red drained. Gradually, the star-shaped cuts began to close, scarring, and eventually disappearing, and his blood vanished into steam. My mouth hung open. His eyes never left me.

“Was that… _magic_?” Marcie whispered.

I saw Bonnie shake her head in the corner of my eye. “Not any kind I’ve ever seen before,” Bonnie breathed back.

Marshall signaled me forward, leaning heavily against the table. I obeyed, though it was more of my own will as I didn’t feel the same compulsion as I had earlier. He grabbed my wrist stiffly and bit down on it hard. I screamed, or at least gasped really loudly. He sucked on it, but only for a moment. Marceline was by my side in a second, pushing him away, though, I was sure that it was only because he let her that she succeeded. I held my wrist, trying to stop the pain, but the wound was already starting to heal itself. I looked up and saw that Marshall’s eyes appeared brighter again.

“You are unfamiliar with this magic,” Marshall breathed, “because it is the magic that only the Sons of Lucifer may use.” He paused to take in a final steadying breath. “That is, the Sons and their pact makers.”

“What… what is it?” Bonnie asked.

He smirked. “It’s a unique practice, in that it taxes its user both mentally and physically,” Marshall said, his strength seeming to return to him. He stood up straighter and his voice became fuller. “And it is not constrained to anything but the user’s skill.”

“Magic that cuts all the corners,” Bonnie said softly.

Marshall smirked at her. “Only fitting for the sons of the Traitor himself.”

A second flash of light interrupted their conversation, and two men appeared at the opposite corner of the room, both covered in the tiny star-patterned cuts the Marshall had boasted not a moment before.

The first man was very tall and dark. His black hair fell across his face and past his chin in stiff, straight locks. He had a stark, square jaw and thin lips, and his eyes burned flame-red. He wore a gray-fur collared vest and black clothes. His skin was ashen.

The second man was just the opposite. He was shorter than the other man by a couple of inches, and his hair was very light strawberry blond, styled up meticulously. He had a reddish complexion and slightly less-pronounced jawline, but fuller lips. He wore bright colors and well-tailored clothes in a style different from anything I was used to seeing. His eyes were a cooler color than the other man’s, falling somewhere in the maroons.

“Kaugomme, Infernus, welcome,” Marshall said, his voice more formal than I’d ever heard it.

The shorter man nodded back. “Abadeer,” he greeted. He glanced over to Bonnie, Marcie and I. “And who is this?” he asked. The scars on his skin closed up more slowly than Marshall’s did, I noticed.

“They’re my ingredients,” Marshall replied, looking over his shoulder at us nonchalantly. I was almost offended.

“A demon, an angel and a witch, huh?” the taller one said. His voice was deep and gravely. “You sure? Blondie there smells pretty human to me.”

“Fionna,” I said, staring him straight in the face. “My name is Fionna.” The man narrowed his eyes at me, and I saw his jaw tense.

“That’s right,” Marshall said, playing it off and throwing his arm around my shoulders, “and she’s our pact maker, too, so don’t be rude.”

The two men were aghast. “You chose a _human_ as our _pact maker_?” the shorter man hissed, eyes wide. “Have you lost your mind?”

I shot the man a glare but held my tongue.

“Oh, come on, Gummy, do you not trust my judgment?” Marshall cooed. “I wouldn’t have spent the past 200 years searching for a suitable pact maker just to choose someone I thought couldn’t handle the responsibility.”

I gave Marshall a questioning look, but he ignored me.

The shorter man, I inferred was Kaugomme, crossed his arms and gave Marshall a displeased look, but didn’t say anything more.

The taller man, Infernus, shook his head. “You’re unbelievable,” he said. “So, other than sorting out this minor setback, all that’s left is to travel to Midnaught, and we can finally put our plan into action.”

Marshall nodded. “It took a while, but I found a way to the Middle Dimension on this planet. There’s a spacial disruption close to the northern pole that acts essentially like a dimensional highway. There’s an old witch that guards that area, but she should be friendly, considering our motives. We’ll be able to travel to the Middle Dimension there.”

Infernus nodded. “Okay, so how do we get there? Shall we have Gomme perform a transportation spell?”

Kaugomme shook his head. “I can’t get us there if I don’t know where we’re going. It’s too dangerous.”

“That’s alright, I’ve already arranged our transportation,” Marshall assured. “Human transportation isn’t exactly the most efficient thing out there, but I figured it’s the easiest option. We’ll be leaving in the morning.” Of course, most of the things that the men were discussing flew right over my head, so all I could really do was pay attention to Marshall. His whole business tone was rather off-putting. Much more direct and concise than his regular smooth and clever attitude.

“What do we do about these two, then?” Infernus asked, jutting a thumb toward Bonnie and Marceline. “I don’t exactly see how they’re useful to us moving toward our objective.”

“You’re _not_ taking Fionna without us,” Bonnie growled. “I don’t know who the hell any of you guys are, or what you’re doing, and I sure as hell don’t trust you with my best friend.”

Infernus raised his eyebrows. “Feisty,” he noted, in a way that almost seemed condescending. “More food for travel, I suppose.”

Kaugomme grimaced. “Do they even what our objective is?” he asked Marshall.

Marshall shrugged. “It may have slipped my mind to tell them. Well, except for Fionna, of course.” The other two men didn’t seem particularly impressed by Marshall’s obvious abundance of responsibility.

“We’re going to kill Lucifer,” Kaugomme said, a hand rubbing his temples. “It’s a plan that’s been in progress for centuries. And, it seems, you girls just might be lucky enough to see it happen.”

Bonnie and Marcie looked shocked. “You’re going to just… go out to find Lucifer… and _kill_ him?” Bonnie asked incredulously. “How are you going to do that!?”

“Darling, we can’t just tell you _everything_ right now,” Marshall insisted, gliding over between my friends. “We won’t have anything to talk about on the plane, and we’ll be enduring a _very_ long flight, all the way up to Alaska.” Marshall faked a yawn. “Oh, would you look at the time. You poor ladies must be exhausted from all of the fun we’ve been having tonight, and we have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. Come, I’ll show you to your rooms for the night and you’ll be all rested up and ready to go for our big adventure, yes?” Marceline scoffed at his patronizing tone. Marshall gathered us up in his outstretched arms and led us through a doorway hidden in the corner of the wall. They didn’t say anything, but I could hear Infernus and Kaugomme following us.

Marshall led us up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway with wide, gothic windows that betrayed the magnificent city landscape below. We appeared to be in a very tall building—likely a customized penthouse atop an apartment complex judging by its unique style—right on the edge of downtown. We turned the corner, where we were met with a long line of doors.

“These first three will be your rooms,” Marshall said. “They’re all fully furnished and feature a lovely view of the city skyline. We’ll be leaving for the airport early in the morning, so get some sleep while you can.” He gestured for us to go ahead. Bonnie and Marcie exchanged a nervous glance before opening the first two doors and stepping inside. The doors shut behind them. I stepped up to the third door, took in a steadying breath and reached for the handle before a cold, pale hand caught me.

“Not so fast, Fionna.”

I whirled around and was met with three pairs of glowing red eyes.

“We have just a few more things to take care of before you go off to bed,” Marshall said.

He took my hand and led me to the end of the hall and up a flight of stairs to a wide living room, completely lined with windows of the same gothic style as the rest of the apartment. The style of furniture, basic and sleek, contrasted starkly with the room’s architectural design. He sat me down on black, backless couch. The three men stood tall around me in a rather intimidating manner, but I tried not to let my nervousness show.

“Relax,” Marshall said, and I felt my muscles slack and my nerves calm down.

“Abadeer, here, apparently did a shitty job of explaining everything you need to know about pact making, so now we get to pick up his slack,” Infernus growled, though honestly everything he ever said sounded like a growl so he could have been ec-fucking-static about the whole thing and I wouldn’t have a clue.

“As pact maker, you’re essentially our source of energy which, as I’m sure you’ve inferred, is the life forces and emotions of living beings,” Kaugomme continued. “In return, you get access to limited use of the Sons’ Magic, which varies with each pact. For example, Abadeer is a mind magic user, as in, he can alter other peoples’ perception, emotional states, and sometimes take total control of someone’s thoughts and actions.” That explained a lot. “Because of your pact, you have access to some of his power. Well, technically you have access to _all_ of his power, but your body would only be able to take a small portion of it at a time.”

I nodded slowly. “That makes sense,” I said, thinking of how I’d accidentally used magic on Bonnie and Marceline earlier that day. I looked at my wrist. “You said that magic takes a physical toll on its user as well as mental. How does that work?” I asked, not looking up.

Marshall noticed the cut and nodded knowingly. “You used it earlier, didn’t you?” he said. I didn’t reply. “Injuries from using spells are much different from regular wounds. The body doesn’t heal them naturally, and magic can’t heal them either. The user’s skill and physical strength determine how fast they heal, if at all.”

He narrowed his eyes, still staring at my hand, then grabbed my wrist, feeling a smooth finger across the scab. He screwed up his eyebrows before looking up in surprise. He scratched at it a bit, and part of the scab came off. I cringed, but it didn’t hurt. “When did this happen?”

“Ah, about 2 o’clock,” I said. I was confused, but probably not for the same reason that he was.

Infernus and Kaugomme exchanged a look. “What spell did you cast?” Infernus inquired.

“ _Stamatibehre_ ,” I said. “I-it was just on Bonnie and Marceline, my friends from back there. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

They looked at each other a second time. “A regular human should take at the very _least_ 24 hours to recover from using a mind spell,” Kaugomme murmured. “Hell, most angels and demons take around twelve. And it’s been, what, seven or eight hours? That’s less than a third of the regular recovery time.” The two men looked up at Marshall disbelievingly.

Marshall smirked wickedly. “What did I tell you?”

“What other spells do you know?” Infernus asked intensely.

I returned his question with a confused stare.

“I haven’t taught her any spells,” Marshall said.

“She just… made it up,” Kaugomme, said.

Marshall nodded.

“How?”

“Because she’s the pact maker.”

“Being a pact maker doesn’t just automatically give her knowledge about this stuff,” Kaugomme huffed.

“I know,” Marshall said. A wide smirk spread across his face before quickly melting away. “Anyway, now that the chitchat’s out of the way, we can finally get this business over with.” Marshall looked down at me, eyes smoldering and pupils dilating. “Undress,” he said.

I stood and did as he said, though I have to say I really didn’t want to. There was still a lot I wanted to ask about, but I guessed it would have to wait for later.

“Why am I undressing for you and your friends?” I asked. I was kind of terrified because I had no idea what was going on. I pulled my dress up over my head then stood there in my underwear.

“The marks of the pact cannot be visible to unworthy eyes,” Kaugomme explained, ish, stepping forward and grabbing me by the wrists. I looked up in worry but Marshall had disappeared suddenly. Gomme sat me down on the couch, before laying me back and staring at my torso with a scrutinizing eye. “Aw, Marshall already got the best spot,” he complained, rubbing a thumb over my hip bone

“As long as you leave her back to me,” Infernus rumbled behind him. I suppressed a shiver.

I had to do this.

…Whatever “this” was…

I was the pact maker.

Kaugomme drew his hands up my sides, stopping at my ribcage, and goosebumps crawled down my skin. “You know what I live off of?” he whispered.

I shook my head before realizing he couldn’t see me. “No,” I whispered. My palms were getting clammy; my heart pounded against my chest so loudly that I was sure he could hear it. He fingered the band of my bra. I closed my eyes lightly.

“Fear,” he said, and then he bit me. It burned. I gasped. He whispered a string of words incomprehensible to me and the burning increased for a few seconds, making me cringe. Then it subsided, just as it had with Marshall. Gomme leaned back up and I quickly sat myself up, crossing my arms in frustration. “Humans,” he scoffed, almost smiling to himself. I glared at him.

“My turn,” Infernus announced as he ever-so-ungracefully sunk his teeth into the middle of my back. I let out a small yelp in surprise and pain. The burn was a cold one, like clenching a hand around a piece of ice for too long. The cold seemed to spread throughout my entire body before melting away, quickly like before.

Both men stood back and looked down at me, almost pitifully.

“Well, at least Marshall chose a girl,” Infernus noted. “I was half expecting him to choose some hairy old man, just to fuck with us.”

“I think Marshall values his toys better than that,” Kaugomme said. “Even he has his limits.”

“It still could’ve been a man,” Infernus muttered. “The fucker knows how much I hate men.”

“Oh, come on, Infernus,” Marshall said from behind me. I turned around and saw him standing directly over me. I hadn’t even heard him walk up. “Talking about me behind my back?” He smirked wickedly, as it seemed to be his signature gesture. He put his hands on my shoulders and slid them down my chest, pulling my back against his legs. “You know I’d only pick the perfect toy for all of us to share,” he cooed. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Don’t chew with your mouth open, Marshall,” Infernus jabbed.

Marshall chuckled and let me go. “Did you explain your magic to her yet?” Marshall asked. Something in his voice implied that he knew the answer already, but that he wanted to take a stab at the other men anyway. Infernus and Kaugomme frowned, not answering immediately. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, quit your whining, I’ll start,” Kaugomme offered. “I already told you what my driving energy is. The magic that I use is movement of inanimate objects, so basically telekinesis. My magic doesn’t require spoken spells as often as Marshall’s or Infernus’s. It’s more rune oriented, unless you need something specific, like a teleportation spell. Like, I have the runes for _locamotio_ and _nichgeht_ —that is, move and stop—on my right and left hands, so I don’t have to cast them vocally whenever I need them, but there’s a more drawn-out process for stronger spells.”

I nodded slowly, trying not to look like I wasn’t totally lost. Kaugomme cast an unsure glance at Infernus, who didn’t respond, instead focusing on Marshall, who inspected him expectantly.

Infernus sighed. “Okay, fine,” he grumbled. “I’m an elemental magic specialist. I control water, earth, air, fire, and anything in between,” he said. “Most of my spells are vocal, with the exception of earth, which only works in runes. My favorite is fire, though, hence my name. My mother always told me that I was born on fire.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Kaugomme added.

Infernus grimaced. “Don’t interrupt me,” he said. “Anyway, I have elemental magic, and I get my energy from confusion and ignorance, which you seem to have a lot of so I should be particularly well-fed this journey.”

I glared at him. My finger, acting on its own volition, traced out a symbol in the air, and a ball of water, about the size of a soccer ball, appeared over his head, falling on him and soaking his torso.

Infernus and I looked at each other with a great deal of surprise, before he tried to lunge at me, but Marshall appeared in between us before that could happen. Meanwhile, Kaugomme was about to pop a blood vessel from laughing too hard.

“Fionna, I think I like you,” he wheezed.

I blushed and drew my knees up to my chest, wincing as I felt another cut graze my wrist. I would be starting a collection soon, it seemed. _It’ll be gone by morning_ , I thought to myself, _I hope_.

“Well,” Infernus started, shaking out the water from his hair, “either Marshall’s been slipping you some notes under the table, or we have a prodigy on our hands.” He stopped and looked at my seriously for a moment. “I’ve never seen a pact maker draw a rune into the air to cast a spell. Or anyone, for that matter. Much less someone who’s only been practicing magic for a day.”

“I see why it took so long for you to find this one,” Kaugomme said. “The little human just might be useful to us after all.”

“What did I tell you?” Marshall said. “She’s a natural.” He turned toward me and tilted my head up with a finger. “And a pretty one, too.” I blushed and buried my face in my knees again.

“Can I put my clothes back on now?” I said, face still hidden and voice muffled.

“I suppose so,” Marshall said. “And I’ll escort you back to your room. You humans do need your rest.”

When I looked up again, the other two men were gone. I pulled on the little blue dress quickly before following Marshall back to the three adjacent rooms in the hallway downstairs. He opened the door for me and I thanked him, walking inside. I immediately collapsed onto the bed, sighing and noting how soft it was. I heard the door close, and looked up to see Marshall standing next to me. I jumped.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” I said.

Marshall leaned over my shoulders and grabbed my wrists.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He kissed me, almost needily, for a moment before pulling away and smiling. “Just needed a little midnight snack,” he said.

In another moment he was gone.


	5. Kinks

I woke up at five o’clock that morning and realized that I didn’t have my cell phone on me. Of course, I realized that having my cell phone probably wouldn’t do me much good on some airplane to Alaska, but I was still rather disappointed at the discovery.

I couldn’t make myself go back to sleep, even if for only another hour or two, so I went ahead and got up to inspect the room I was in. The floor was a cool, peach-colored tile which stung my bedwarm feet at the touch. I walked over to the wide window on the opposite side of the room. It was still dark outside, the city lights still visible against the ground, but I could see the sun rising in the distance. The view was certainly stunning.

There was a single knock on the door before it opened. I turned around and saw Marshall carrying a bundle of clothes in one hand and a pair of boots in the other.

“Oh, you’re awake already,” he said. He threw the clothes onto my bed and dropped the shoes on the ground. “Put these on,” he said, though the command wasn’t paired with compulsion. “It’ll be cold.” He closed the door without another word. I hesitated before walking over to the bed and examining what he brought. There was a long, dark blue sweater and undershirt and a pair of thick black leggings, as well as undergarments, all plain and white.

“What the actual fuck,” I murmured, stripping down and pulling on the new clothes. They were all very comfortable, and they seemed to fit well. “How the hell did he know my size?” I added, under my breath. I walked over to the door and pulled on a pair of socks, which were inside the shoes, before unlacing the boots and putting them on, too. They were plain beige cargo boots, and, like the other clothes, fit perfectly and comfortably.

I found a mirror in the corner of the room and examined myself closely. My hair was a bit of a mess but there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it without a brush, so I settled for a quick finger-comb before looking myself over the rest of the way. I hated to admit it, given the circumstances, but I looked pretty damn cute.

I emerged from my room eventually, looking down the hallway to see if anyone else was coming out but it was empty. I traveled down the hall and up the stairs the same way I’d come before to the wide living room. There was no one else there except for Marshall, who was reclined on a white chair with some sort of book in his hands. He was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him, with black jeans and a reddish long-sleeve shirt, and reading glasses. He pretended not to hear me as I walked up and sat in a chair opposite him.

“I didn’t know demon lords needed glasses,” I commented.

He looked up at me with an eyebrow raised and closed the book he was holding. “Well we can’t be _all_ perfect,” he said, pulling off his glasses and swiping his eyes over me. “Glad to see the clothes fit.”

“Yeah, I was wondering how you knew my bra size,” I said, my expression overall unimpressed.

“Really? The shoe size was the hard one,” he said, leaning back in the chair and resting his face in his palm.

“Seriously?” I deadpanned.

“Well to be fair I’ve never seen just your feet before, but I _have_ seen you shirtless,” he said, almost trying to hold back a smile, then giving up and letting the expression spread across his face.

My face heated up at the memory. “Oh, yeah. That.”

He chuckled as he put his reading glasses on again and opened the book to the page he was on before. I tried looking at the spine, but realized that it had no title.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“Porn,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m kidding.” He smiled, not looking up.

“But really, what is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Can I see?”

“Be my guest,” he offered, looking up at me over his glasses.

I walked over behind him and leaned over the chair to look. The pages were all blank. “There’s nothing here,” I said.

“I told you it was nothing,” he said. I could hear the smirk in his voice.

I shot him a glare that he didn’t see. “Gimme the glasses,” I said.

“Nah.”

“I wanna see what you’re reading.”

“I told you it’s porn.”

“I don’t care.” I took his glasses and put them on, then stole his book. The pages had words on them then, but whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t in English. “I can’t read this,” I said.

“I bet you can,” Marshall said, looking up at me over his shoulder. “Come, sit,” he ordered, pupils dilating the way they did whenever he told me to do something.

“You didn’t have to _make_ me do that, you know,” I said, walking around and sitting in his lap. “Bossypants.”

“I know, I just like telling you what to do,” he purred. He wrapped his arms around mine and held the book with me.

“ _Revelin_ ,” he whispered, right next to my ear. The words appeared to rearrange themselves, and I could suddenly understand the text in front of me.

“Is this… a spellbook?” I asked, scanning over numerous runes and spells.

“It can be whatever you want it to be.”

I scanned through more pages, trying to take in the words of various simple spells so that I could maybe remember some of them later. They were rather simple, the lot of them, but there were easily thousands of them.

“So… porn, huh?” I said.

“Mmm,” he hummed, ghosting his lips across my neck.

I scoffed. “Stop that, jerk.”

He smiled and laughed, then leaned away. “What? I’m hungry,” he growled. “It’s like I’m sitting here with a cake in my lap, but the cake keeps yelling at me whenever I try to lick the icing.” He traced his fingers across my neck and down my side. “Do you have any idea how _annoying_ that is?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his analogy. “So is that what I am to you? A cake?” I asked.

“A very attractive cake. That can cast spells,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. He kissed my neck softly, right above my vein. “Hmmm, just a bite. That’s all I want, I swear.” He grazed his teeth over that same spot, eliciting a small gasp from me.

“You could just do it, if you really wanted to,” I noted. “You could make me do whatever you wanted me to do.”

“That’d be too _easy_ though,” he said, squeezing my waist a little then tucking a lock of hair behind my ear so that he could more easily reach my skin.

“You’re such a horny teenage boy.”

“Not horny, just hungry,” he grumbled against my neck. “Probably.”

“It’s the same part of your brain either way.”

“Oh, is that why I get the two confused?”

I turned to raise my eyebrows at him and he shot back a cocky grin.

I stood up. “In any case, _I’m_ starving, so if you’re going to end up eating me later anyway, you should probably be working on fattening me up, right?” I said, hands on my waist and hips tilted.

Marshall looked up at me, still smiling. “You know, you’re cute with glasses on.”

I rolled my eyes at him and turned away to walk over to the kitchen on the other side of the room. “Yeah, whatever. You better have human food somewhere around here.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

After a few preparations in the morning, we took a large elevator to the bottom floor of the apartment complex, where a black van was waiting for us outside. Bonnie and Marcie and I sat in the very back seats while Gomme and Infernus sat in the middle seats and Marshall in the front. The drive to the airport was long and awkward. Neither Bonnie nor Marcie nor I had the nerve to strike up any conversation, and the three men in the car stayed still and silent as stone.

We were dropped off at the airport and taken to a section reserved for private flights. Marshall handed us each a bag. We went inside and were quickly scanned then taken to our gate. There was a small, black plane outside; it had to be a private jet. Marshall ushered us outside and up the metal staircase into the plane.

The inside of the plane, while small, was rather lavish. There were four rows of standard leather seats, though much larger and nicer than in commercial planes, and two sets of seats facing each other behind them with a TV screen behind that. A flight attendant took our bags as we entered, and we were seated in the rows of seats at the front, Bonnie next to Marceline, me next to Marshall, and Gomme next to Infernus, respectively.

“How did you do all of this?” I asked Marshall, as we sat waiting for the final preparations before takeoff.

“Oh, well I arranged for the flight the day that I met you, actually. It was a bit difficult getting everything together, especially trying to find a crew that I knew wouldn’t _talk_ or get suspicious about anything—you know how these chirpy flight attendants can get—and of course then I had to get all of that annual maintenance done on the plane since it’s been at least a few months since I used it last, so you can see why it took so long to set up, but that’s life in the human world for you, right? It still worked out as well as it could in the end,” Marshall explained with a particularly bored expression.

“Wait, so you mean to say that you already knew that I was going to be your… pact maker the night that we met?” I asked.

“Oh, I knew from the moment I saw you, honey,” he purred, turning toward me with the slightest hint of a grin in his eyes. “It was written all over you.”

 “That’s crazy,” I said, shaking my head.

“I have the gift of mind magic, darling,” Marshall said. “It’s simple. It’s what I do. What I’m good at.”

It was weird to think about him probing my mind like that, and from the sounds of it he did it a lot. “So, like, do you even get cuts from using those types of small spells anymore?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I suppose I do, but they usually heal up before I get the chance to feel them. I’m pretty much always performing a mind spell. Like mind-reading; I usually have that one on. So yeah I do tend to have this perpetual ache in my wrist whenever I do a continuous spell like that, I guess, but no cuts.” He combed a hand through his dark hair, and I caught myself staring at his wrist, though it was hidden by his sleeve.

“So you have like a telepathy spell on most of the time? Do you have one on now?” I said.

“Of course,” he said. “ _Telepatos_ is the spell, since you were wondering.”

 _Telepatos_ , I thought.

“No, it won’t start working if you just say it. You have to put energy into it.” He paused. “It’s just the standard _dispella_ whenever you want to turn it off. That one doesn’t require energy, but you still have to mean it.” Another pause. “I don’t know how the magic ‘knows’ when you mean something or not. It’s magic. It just does what you tell it to do.” And another. “Yes, just like controlling a part of your body. It’s like an extension of the will.”

“I don’t even have to talk to you; you can just listen in on my brain and talk back at it,” I said.

“You have no idea how much I have to hold myself back from doing that all the time,” he chuckled.

“So like…”

“Yeah I hear it all in my head sort of like that. It’s proximity based, but none of that super long-range stuff you see in all the movies. It’s just like listening in on conversations, but with nothing in the outside world to interrupt it. So, for example, I can tell you now that Infernus has been listening in on our conversation carefully and judging you as a choice for the pact maker. Mostly good things, don’t worry. Gomme is hungry and he simply won’t shut up about it.”

“Just to piss you off, Abadeer,” Gomme jabbed.

“Shut up, Gummy,” Marshall hissed. “Marceline is worried about the cold and how her girlfriend and you are going to manage—though I have everything covered, I assure you—and Bonnie is hoping Marceline isn’t listening in on our conversation because of some tragic angel backstory or something. So that’s all clear to me since it’s right next to me, but the flight attendants and pilots are more like distant conversations than anything. Of course, there’s another spell I could cast if I wanted something long-range, but that takes more effort and frankly isn’t useful in most day-to-day situations, as I’m sure you could imagine.”

Just as Marshall finished his explanation, the plane’s speaker crackled to life as the pilot announced our takeoff and told us not to roam the cabin until we got to such and such altitude, all that great stuff.

“Magic is some crazy shit,” I murmured.

“Oh, but you love it, though,” Marshall said.

 _I can’t say that I don’t_ , I thought.

I sighed, trying to prepare myself for the long flight ahead of me.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

Planes are loud. Planes are offensively loud. Even this supposedly super-insulated fancy schmancy private jet airplane was extremely, ridiculously, offensively fucking loud. I hated planes.

We’d been in the air for maybe an hour. There was some turbulence after takeoff so we weren’t yet allowed to “move freely about the cabin” or whatever it is that pilots tell you. I wasn’t much one for conversation at the moment, since planes always tended to make me feel a bit faint. Not nauseous, though, thankfully enough.

The corners of my vision began to fade to an unfortunately familiar reddish hue. The noise and shakiness of the airplane faded down to nothingness, and time seemed to stop around me. I looked over to see Marshall staring, his eyes glowing.

I cocked an eyebrow at him, asking what was up.

“Come on,” he said, unbuckling his seatbelt and standing up. “I don’t want to make a mess.”

“What?” I asked, a bit more intensely than I intended.

He rolled his eyes. “Just do it.”

I followed his example and stood up. He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me in for a kiss. “What?” I breathed.

“Starving,” he groaned.

In another moment we were in the plane’s bathroom, much larger and cleaner than a commercial plane’s, by the way. Marshall had me pressed up against the door, kissing my neck eagerly and holding my wrists down by my sides.

He traced his tongue up my neck and nipped at my jawline playfully. He kissed me with venom that had me so stunned that it took me a moment to start kissing back. He moaned into the kiss as I started participating before bringing his hands to my waist and pulling me forward so that our hips were connected.

“Just tell me when to stop,” he breathed.

He pulled back for a moment to strip me of my sweater and himself of his own shirt, then pulled me in again for another kiss, threading his fingers through my hair. He felt his other hand across my shoulders and down my back, grazing his fingers beneath the fabric of my camisole and rubbing circles into the soft skin where my leg and hip met. He pulled down the waistband of my leggings ever so slightly to trace out the seven-pointed star on my hip bone with a sharp nail. I gasped as he scratched deeper and felt blood trickle down my side.

Giving me the most wicked grin he could muster, Marshall knelt down in front of me and licked slowly up the scratch. I heard him whisper a word, “ _Pervasiva,_ ” and a shiver spread throughout my body, tingling my every nerve. I felt my heart stop and I couldn’t breathe for a moment, before a sort of high swept me off my feet, apparently literally as the next thing I remembered from my drunken stupor was being held against Marshall’s very bare, very beautifully toned chest.

“What the frick frack was that?” I murmured noting his unnaturally cool skin, or maybe I was just really warm.

“ _Magic_ ,” he whispered into my ear, as if I were some seven-year-old kid and that would just automatically satisfy me.

“You are a condescending bag of dicks,” I said.

He chuckled and stood me upright. “Creative,” he commented.

I looked down and noticed his wrists, deep patterned scars beginning to show at an alarming rate. They hadn’t been there before, but they seemed to be spreading faster with each passing second. Er. Metaphorical second.

“What is that?” I asked. “Why are they appearing so fast?”

Marshall frowned. “I’ve been doing this spell for too long. It’s starting to add up.”

“What does that mean?”

“Time-based spells like this have exponential effects, as in, the cost of using them multiplies larger and larger as time passes.” He watched with distaste as the scratches made their way up past his elbows. “I guess we’ll have to cut this short.” His eyes bore into mine with a spark of evil that I didn’t often see.

His jaws were clamped around my neck, lightning fast, and I had to hold back a scream as teeth, sharp as knives, tore through my skin messily. The edges of my vision fogged and I went limp, but in that same moment, he let go of me.

“Get your clothes on, before I bleed out,” he said, wiping his face off with his sleeve, because apparently the motherfucker can put on a shirt faster than I can blink.

I nodded hazily and dressed myself then followed him out of the bathroom, back to our seats.

The noise and movement of the airplane returned, and Marshall and I slumped in our chairs.

 _That was fun_ , I thought at him.

“ _Telepatos_ ,” I whispered.

 _Huh. You must have a kink for pain_ , Marshall thought back with a cocky grin. _You’ll need it, with the occupation you’re in_ , he added.

_Oh, whatever, you man-whore._

Marshall just smiled.

“ _Dispella._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah pretty much zero plot happened in this chapter. But that's okay, right? XD I'll get the next chapter up soon, hopefully.


	6. Planning on the Plane

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow guys I am so sorry I have been so behind with my updates on this story like hot damn. I'ma go ahead and post up to chapter 9 today since that's what I have written. ^^; Sorry, gah, I'm a bad person.

“ _Attention passengers, you are now free to move about the cabin, thank you_.”

As soon as the pilot made the announcement I was out of my seat. Marshall gave me an unimpressed, disinterested look, as was another one of his signature gestures, and I rolled my eyes at him. “I hate planes,” I explained, more for myself than for him.

He chuckled.

I saw that Kaugomme and Infernus were also standing up behind us, making their way to the open sitting area further back on the plane. I followed, sitting on the cushioned bench opposite them. Marceline and Bonnie saw us moving and followed wearily. Marshall was the last to join us, sitting on the bench with his two half-brothers.

“So,” Bonnie started. She took a deep breath. “What exactly is this… plan that you guys have about killing Lucifer? And why are you doing it?”

“Do you even have to ask that?” Infernus hissed. “Lucifer is a bad man. It’s a wonder he’s still around, with all of the people out there that want him dead.”

“Okay, point taken and all, but how exactly are you going to do it?” Bonnie asked.

Infernus and Kaugomme exchanged a look. “It’s not exactly a simple process,” Kaugomme said.

“Well, we have nine hours left on this plane to kill, so I’m sure you can sort it out enough to share,” Bonnie replied, unconvinced.

Kaugomme sighed. “All right, fine,” he allotted. “First things first, we have to get out of this realm and actually _into_ Midnaught, which is, as Marshall said, why we’re going up to Alaski, or whatever it’s called, in the first place. Once there, we’ll be seeking out some old witch that lives out in the middle of the icebergs and she’ll open the dimensional rift for us. Once in Midnaught, we’ll have to navigate the lands to Lucifer’s city, which is actually a lot harder than it sounds, with how the whole dimension is laid out. Then, once we make it inside the city, we get to the inner circle through the underground, and take him out.”

Infernus rolled his eyes. “You make it sound easy, when you put it like that,” he scoffed. “‘Make it to the inner circle and take him out.’ That doesn’t even cover the half of it,” he said, more toward Bonnie and Marcie and I. “You have to know what you’re getting into, when you deal with Lucifer and his crowd. He’s got a lot of buddies with a lot of reasons to help him out, and they all have powers beyond anything your little hearts could even dream of. Then Lucifer himself is a nasty fellow. One second he’s a god, and the next second he’s the most horrible monster you’ll ever see, who wields the darkest artes known to existence. He’ll twist your brain into a knot with his tongue before you lay so much as a finger on him, and he’ll feed off of any emotion you can harbor. He’s not something that just anyone can trifle with.” Infernus grunted and sat back, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, okay then, all that being said, I have a really stupid question to ask,” I said, after a bit of a pause. “So don’t judge me when I ask it.”

“Spit it out,” Infernus said impatiently.

“So, like, if Lucifer is this huge powerhouse of darkness and evil that has influence over all of this shit, why hasn’t some entity like God tried to stop him yet?”

Infernus exchanged another look with Kaugomme before they both burst into laughter. “Some _God_ entity trying to stop him!” Infernus boomed. “What an idea!” He wiped the corner of his eye with a thumb then looked back up at me. “Don’t tell me you believe in a _God_ , Fionna,” he chuckled.

I held his gaze steady and didn’t reply.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I don’t _not_ believe in a God if that means anything.”

“Not a damn thing, Fionna,” he rasped. Infernus grinned and shook his head. “Let me tell you a little thing about ‘God.’ He doesn’t exist. He’s a story that sad mothers tell their children before they go to bed so they don’t cry at night. ‘God’ is an idea. There is no physical being that represents him, no source of power for him to come from. God is a story, and he sure as hell can’t destroy someone like Lucifer.”

I frowned, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked over questioningly at Marceline, but she was silent, her expression unreadable. Bonnie was the same way.

Infernus’ expression softened the slightest bit. “Listen, Fionna,” he started. “If you want to go anywhere in this twisted world, you’ve gotta get there yourself. You have to be your own hero. You can’t expect anyone else to come in and save you; you’ll have to be the one strong enough to save yourself. You can’t rely on anyone or anything but you. It’s the only way to survive.”

I sneered and shook my head. “You sound like a sappy cartoon character,” I jabbed.

Infernus averted his gaze but didn’t say anything more.

Silence hung in the air uncomfortably for a long time before anyone spoke again.

“What about Lucifer’s inner circle, then?” Marceline asked.

Kaugomme and Infernus glanced at each other, and, neither able to give an answer, turned to look at Marshall. He examined his nails disinterestedly, and didn’t bother to look up when he spoke. “Lucifer’s inner circle embodies the deadly sins; sloth, wrath, greed, gluttony, lust, and envy,” he said. “Sloth isn’t much to worry about, considering she’ll try to avoid work whenever possible, but she has very powerful mind magic that will force you into a motionless stupor, so try not to fall for that. Wrath, on the other hand, is very powerful and energetic, but will tire easily, if he doesn’t kill you first. Greed is annoying, but he’ll fall for any bribe, so we shouldn’t even have to fight him. Gluttony will eat you in a heartbeat, and I intend to avoid her if at all possible. Lust is…” Marshall trailed off, smiling to himself. He glanced up for a moment. “You don’t have to worry about Lust; I can take care of him.”

I blinked and grimaced at his blatancy.

“Envy is a total bitch,” Marshall went on, “and a copycat. Fighting her is like fighting yourself, only worse. Another one I’d prefer to avoid if possible. She’s probably the most powerful of Lucifer’s inner circle, as she also possesses powerful kinesthetic and telekinetic magic. I’ve had the great fortune of never actually meeting her in person.” Marshall fell silent, giving up on his nails and resting his arms on the back of the bench, leaning his head on his fist. I caught myself staring and tried to avert my eyes as subtly as possible, though I was sure he noticed anyway.

“Aren’t you missing one, though?” I asked, staring at nothing in particular. “What about Pride?”

Marshall smirked. “I was hoping you’d ask.” he said. “Pride, oh, Pride. What a lovely fellow he is. Said to be the worst of the deadly sins, yes? Sometimes even the father of all sin.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Couldn’t you guess? Pride is none other than Lucifer himself,” Marshall said, his features sobering. “They say that Pride and Lucifer were once two different entities, until one day, a long, long time ago, Pride started spreading rumors of his grandeur, saying that he was a thousand times more powerful than Lucifer could ever dream to be. Lucifer, after catching word of these rumors, was furious. He challenged Pride to a battle, sure that he could prove Pride wrong. The day of the battle came; they fought, and the results of the battle were astounding, unexpected. Pride absolutely demolished Lucifer, and he would have killed him; however, in the final moments of the battle, Lucifer laying bloody and battered on the ground, begging for his life to be spared, Pride saw an opportunity. He offered the cowardly man his life in return for taking his place as the Devil. Lucifer was appalled by the conditions of the offer, but, desperate for his life, made a deal, sure to benefit both parties. Alone, he and Pride were powerful, but together, he said, they would be unstoppable. He and Pride combined their entities into one, two minds sharing one body, and in that moment became the most powerful being the realms had ever seen. Lucifer, being permanently scarred from the battle, inserted his essence into Pride’s body, giving him all of his power in the process. As a result, he can perform artes twice as powerful as any other known being, and even cast multiple spells at once.”

“And how the hell are we supposed to kill something like that?” I burst.

A sinister expression crossed Marshall’s face. “I can’t just go and tell you _all_ of my little secrets now, Fionna. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

I frowned and crossed my arms, searching his face for any hint of what he was thinking about, but he kept his expression carefully unreadable.

_Ugh, I wish I could just cast a mind-reading spell without him noticing_ , I thought. _Telepatos_ , I added for good measure.

Thoughts that were not mine flooded into my head. _‘…she asks me about God and the other angels I won’t know what to tell…’ ‘…Marshall hadn’t chosen this mortal girl in the first place we wouldn’t have to deal with these…’ ‘…course you can’t cast a spell without my knowing, that would be impossi….’ ‘…hope Marcie is okay right now. She probably has to block out…’ ‘…you possibly be more vague? Even I don’t know what the whole plan is to kill Lucif…’ ‘…will combine our powers into one so that we can…’ ‘…what if she finds out…’ ‘…how will we even survive…’ ‘…what if she’s more powerful than I antici…’ ‘…how can she bear it…’ ‘…what’s going to happen to us…’ ‘…we’re going to die…’_

“ _DISPELLA_ ,” I shouted.

Everyone looked at me suddenly. Only a moment had passed. Surely it was longer? I looked down and saw several star-shaped scars marring my hands. They were very sore, but appeared to be scabbing over already.

“What the hell’s gotten into you?” Infernus griped.

“I…” I looked around at everyone with fear in my eyes. “I was just thinking, and I said a spell, in my head, and…”

Infernus glowered at me. “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I know, I don’t know. I’m—maybe I’m just crazy. I don’t know. I know,” I rambled.

“You’re saying you just cast a spell with your _thoughts_?” Kaugomme asked disbelievingly.

“I mean, I think, I guess—”

“How the fuck am I supposed to hate you when you keep not fucking things up?” Infernus hissed.

“I, uh, I’m sorry?”

Marshall just grinned.

“This adventure just keeps getting better,” he cooed, leaning forward onto his knees. “What do I keep telling you?”

Kaugomme and Infernus frowned, but didn’t say anything else.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

The next nine hours passed by very slowly for me. I found myself dozing off and on, and I remember accidentally leaning onto Marshall’s shoulder a few times, whenever we were sitting next to each other. I didn’t dream any, but then again it wasn’t particularly restful dozing, with all of the loud noises and rough air and flight attendants bothering me with questions about my wellbeing.

I didn’t remember landing. I remembered being forced to get up and find my bags and walk through a lot of weird hallways inside this pretty small airport to a built-in hotel where we’d be staying until the following morning. Then Marshall forced a plate of food into my hands, somehow full of all of the things I was craving at the time, and told me to eat, even though I insisted on not being hungry. I ate anyway, eventually, only half awake.

I was sharing a room with Bonnie and Marcie. The room was furnished with two beds, a couch, and a really old looking television set that only had two channels; bluescreen and static. I didn’t particularly care, though. It was only around six in the evening, but I was exhausted. I bid Marcie and Bonnie an early goodnight and quickly fell asleep in the fluffy white sheets.


	7. The Devil has a Heart of Ice

“What the hell are you doing here?”

I was in a dark place; swirling clouds of black and red were all that I could see, with the exception of Marshall Lee, reclining in a chair and giving me the most hostile look he could muster with his rather limited palate of expressions.

“What? What do you mean?” I asked. Judging by my surroundings, this had to be a dream, though I didn’t know why dream Marshall was being so pissy.

Then again, it wasn’t out of character.

“How did you get here?” he said.

I shook my head. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

A voice that seemed to come from the outside made a worried noise. “Marshall, what's wrong?” it called.

A look of realization crossed Marshall’s face for a moment, but it was quickly replaced with confusion. The swirling darkness around me seemed to intensify, the blackness becoming more choking and violent. He screwed up his eyebrows and narrowed his eyes at me.

“Are you... am I hallucinating?”

“I don't know,” I said, keeping my eyes on him as the clouds threatened to swallow everything up.

But he didn’t appear to be paying attention to me anymore. He shook his head and rubbed his temples. “ _What’s wrong with me…?_ ” he seemed to say, though I couldn’t see his lips moving. “ _No, that’s impossible._ ” The darkness was just at arm’s reach, then. Already my vision appeared to be failing. I let myself fade out into the blackness as deep sleep pulled me away with its long, tangled claws.

_bdmgs_

My head was killing me and my arms were sore when I woke up. I rubbed them, and they felt sticky and bumpy. My eyes shot open. I was greeted with the sight of blood on my sheets. I got up, as silently as I could, and made my bed quickly, hiding the stains. I stumbled over to the overnight bag that Marshall gave me for a change of clothes before stripping down and hiding my dirtied shirt in the bottom of the bag. I shuddered at the thin, swollen scabs that crawled up from my hands. I needed a shower. And an Advil.

I glanced over at the clock and saw that it was close to 4:30 in the morning, though I had no intention of going back to sleep. I crept into the bathroom and shut the door before turning on the light. My reflection in the mirror made me flinch. The scratches went all the way up my shoulders and across my chest. Blood smeared all across my torso and arms. I turned on the shower and waited for it to get warm, trying not to stare at myself as I leaned heavily against the counter in the meantime.

The heat stung my skin, and the water ran orange as I tried to gently scrub the half-dried blood on my skin without reopening any of the cuts, not daring to use soap of any kind. It took a while, but I sort of had a while to kill.

After I’d rubbed myself clean, I curled up into a ball in the floor of the shower and rubbed my forehead against my knees. I tried not to cry. I’d been so focused on getting myself cleaned up that I hadn’t thought about how I even got cut up in the first place. It wasn’t unapparent, either, the patterns, the headaches. Somehow, I’d been using magic in my sleep. I had no idea how, or why, but I did it. I was scared.

But that would mean that the dream that I’d had… No. That wasn’t possible. I didn’t even know the spell to read minds before he told me. There was no way that kind of magic could just—just pop into my head.

…But what if I _did_? I didn’t know the spell for “stop” before I performed it. I didn’t know the rune for water before I drew it in the air. They were just _impulses_. So really that wasn’t… there was nothing that could have stopped me from doing magic in my sleep. But…

No. That couldn’t be right. That couldn’t be possible.

I sighed and shook my head to clear my thoughts, then got up off of the floor. I stepped out of the shower lightly, cringing as cold tile met my feet. I dabbed my body off and, after seeing red speckles on the towel, let my cuts air dry before dressing. My head didn’t feel any better; if anything, it was worse than when I’d woken up. It was going to be a very long day.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

We stood before a valley sculpted from ice. Marshall had furnished us with thick coats and tall boots for the icy weather, but the piercing winds made me feel like I was naked in a frozen lake. A small plane carried us to a remote area in the glaciers. I had no idea where we were in relation to anywhere on a map, not like it mattered anyway since I was apparently about to be in an entirely different dimension by the end of the day.

Rising walls of rock and ice surrounded a barren landscape. The snow lay on the ground frighteningly peaceful. The cold stung my eyes and crept down my skin in icy tendrils. It was unnatural. Everything about this place seemed off. The wind tore at the fabric of my jacket, yet the scenery was completely still. Not even the clouds covering the unending sky shifted. Everything was… frozen.

“What is this place?” I asked, softly, feeling as though my voice could cause the careful balance to collapse.

“The glitch,” Marshall said, his gaze carefully kept straight forward.

“Glitch?”

“Watch.”

He took a slow step forward, then another, and another, then disappeared. I gasped, looking around wildly.

“What? Where did he—”

Infernus nudged my shoulder—I hid a wince—and pointed. Way out, about twenty-five meters away, I’d say, Marshall stood facing us, a raven figure amidst a white wasteland. He took two more steps, suddenly appearing a few meters to the right of where he was before. Three steps after that, he was all the way across the empty valley, then, a few moments later, he appeared standing right in front of me. I jumped.

“So… what are we supposed to do?” I asked, shying from the intensity of his scrutinizing gaze.

“Find the hole,” he said.

_bdmgs_

We’d been walking for what felt like hours. More than once we’d been separated, or walked through glitches that left us high in the sky or face-flat in the snow. But we made it.

It was all very sudden, actually. We took a step forward, and then we were in a totally different place. We stood in a large room, almost as big as the valley we’d been in just earlier. It looked to be some sort of castle. There were large doors and corridors branching off from the sides of the room, and a dark blue, intricately designed rug that stretched all the way across the room, from where we stood to what looked like a throne on the other side. It was all unlike anything I’d seen before.

But the strangest thing about the whole place was that it was upside down. I felt the force of gravity try to pull me toward the ceiling, but a separate, stronger, almost definitely magical force kept my feet on the ground. It was like standing in the middle of a battle that made me feel like I was being pulled apart. My head throbbed.

“Where the hell’s that witch, Marshall?” Infernus grunted from behind me. “I don’t like the feel of this place.”

“Shut up,” Marshall snapped impatiently. “She’s on her damn way.”

“Who’s here?” a strained, high-pitched voice called from behind us.

We turned around to face a beautiful, but very old, woman. She was tall and thin as a toothpick. Her skin was ashen and her hair was the whitest white that I’d ever seen. She frowned at us with thin lips and narrow eyes that burned icy blue. She wore dark blue robes that bore patterns of frost. There was a young maid standing next to her. Her face had the grace of a bird, but her actual physique could only be described as unfortunate. The girl stared at us with a passive expression.

“Gunter, I thought I told you to take out the trash,” the woman rasped at the girl. “I don’t remember inviting any Sons into my castle.”

The girl remained silent.

“You must have some good reason for so blatantly intruding. So. Spit it out.” Despite her finer outer appearance, the old woman’s voice sounded like an out-of-tune violin. I winced a little every time she spoke.

“Simone… it’s been a while,” Marshall said, his voice silken.

The old woman sneered momentarily, revealing very white teeth. “Am I supposed to know you from somewhere?” she hissed.

Marshall shrugged, smiling. Or was it a grimace? “I’m a Son. Every witch as powerful as you has seen me around once or twice,” he sang. “But that’s not why we came here today. We came to ask a favor.”

“In what world do you think I’d just hand out favors to the abominations of the multiverse?” She glared deeply into Marshall’s eyes, her hands beginning to glow.

“I believe that you may share the goals of us ‘abominations,’ actually. We need you to open the rift so that we may get into Midnaught.”

“So you can do what, exactly?”

“We’re going to kill Pride.”

For a moment, the old woman, Simone I suppose, was silent. Then she lost herself in laughter. Her hands stopped glowing as she held them to her face, rubbing her eyes and covering her mouth. Marshall’s expression didn’t change.

“You can’t be serious,” Simone squealed between breaths.

“Dead serious.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the same group,” she paused to giggle once more, “that attempted this previously and couldn’t even get into the _city_.”

Marshall’s gaze was level. Infernus and Kaugomme exchanged an anxious look.

Simone fell into another bout of laughter that lasted for an uncomfortable amount of time. I shifted my weight and tried not to look embarrassed.

“Okay, _okay_ , fine,” she snorted. “If you’re so adamant about it after the first time, I’ll open the rift. Just give me the passports.”

Marshall’s expression shifted. Infernus frowned. “What passports?” he grumbled. Marshall almost looked relieved that he wasn’t the only one confused.

“Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t know,” the woman chuckled. “Sure, Haley only passed the motion 21 years ago but I was certain that men with such purpose as you would already have them.”

“Well, we don’t,” Kaugomme sighed. “Look, we’re in a bit of a hurry. Couldn’t you just open the portal anyway?”

Simone clicked her tongue. “No can do. Haley’s got a whole network of spells around Midnaught. You need the passports to get through. I couldn’t open the rift if I tried.”

Infernus growled almost inaudibly. “Are you fucking kidding me…?”

“Then send us to Ordolholm,” Marshall said, an edge in his voice that hadn’t been present earlier.

“Ordolholm… isn’t that…?” I said toward Bonnie and Marcie.

“Yes, it’s what your human world calls Hell, a massive understatement in my opinion,” Infernus grumbled, “but it’s also where this witch Haley lives so we’ll just have to suffer through it to get these passports or whatever from her to move on with our quest.”

I nodded slowly. “So is this place… dangerous?”

Infernus held back a laugh. “ _Dangerous?_ Not even a little bit. It’s the most _boring_ hole in the dirt the multiverse has ever known. There’s a line for everything. Literally, everything. It’s like one of those… what do you call them… amusement parks on a holiday or something. Awful. Truly awful.”

“Oh, well… that sounds…”

“Horrible.”

“Underwhelming.”

Meanwhile, Simone had been casting the spell to create a portal to Ordolholm, and was almost finished when we ended our conversation. The girl held a bowl in front of the old woman as a sort of magenta smoke curled around the woman’s fingertips, then lashed out suddenly, swirling into the shape of a door. The smoke door opened. Darkness escaped from the portal’s edges. Marshall bowed his head in thanks toward the old witch before walking forward and stepping through the rift. The rest of us soon followed.

For a moment, the world was black, then I felt as if I were spinning. I clenched my head and nearly swooned as gravity righted itself from the distortion of the castle. Somebody caught my arm and steadied me, and I smiled at Marcie after my senses straightened out.

“So this is Ordolholm…” I said.

It was uncomfortable.

The temperature felt like it was too high and too low at the same time. My limbs felt heavier, and the air was just a little too thick. We seemed to be on the edges of a village, just outside a city blocked off with a very tall stone wall. The world appeared as varying hues of gray, and the sky glowed pasty orange. The air seemed stagnant though clouds swirled above us in spirals.

“Haley will be in the middle of the city. We can get inside the wall then stop somewhere to rest, Marshall said, already heading down the slope toward the stone wall in the distance.

As soon as I tried to take a step, my leg collapsed under my weight, and I tumbled into the ash. I lay on my side, groaning.

“Fionna!” Bonnie yelped, leaning down next to me. “What did you do to her?” she snapped in Marshall’s direction.

Marshall appeared at my side in the next instant, slinging one of my arms around his shoulder and standing me back up again.

“Are you okay?” he asked me.

“I don’t know, I feel a little dizzy,” I said.

Marshall glanced at the village behind us. “We can stop if you need to.”

“No, I’ll be—” I cut myself off as another wave of dizziness spread over me. “Actually, that would be nice.”

Marshall picked me up in his arms. “We’ll stop in the village. I’m sure they’ll have some place where you can rest.” The group travelled slowly across the slope to the village sticking out of the ash. I clung tightly to the front of Marshall’s shirt, even though I was sure he wouldn’t drop me. Being near him seemed to sooth my headache a bit, and I wondered if it was one of his spells, even though he didn’t seem to be casting. Maybe it was just my imagination.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

When I woke up I was lying in a cot. I looked to my side and saw that Marcie was lying next to me.

“She collapsed soon after you,” said a voice coming from my other side. I turned and found myself looking up at Kaugomme, sitting in a chair next to me.

“Where’s Marshall?” I asked.

“Abadeer had to leave. He asked me to watch you while he was gone.”

I grimaced and stared up at the ceiling. “Why did we collapse?” I said.

“It’s one of the many perks of Hell,” he said. “The more worries that you have, the heavier your body feels. It’s a tricky little spell cast all across the realm, and it tends to have heightened effects the lower you are on the scale.”

“The scale?”

“The social scale.”

“I didn’t know there was a ‘social scale’ in place.”

“There is.” A pause. “You’re not at the bottom.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” I grumbled.

“Can you sit up?” he asked me suddenly.

I tried moving my arms to prop myself up, but they were stiff and heavy. “Nope,” I said.

Kaugomme frowned. “Perhaps I can relieve you of some of your worries, then.”

I shook my head. “Most of my worries are about things that you can’t help.”

“I’m sure you can think of one or two.”

I struggled to cross my arms, which lay heavily on my chest. “Where’s Marshall?”

“He went out into the village to collect any information on the latest changes in security of Midnaught. Or any useful information at all, since lowly villagers as these are likely to know very little.”

“You’re so pretentious.”

“Humility is a virtue.”

“Who is Haley?”

Kaugomme froze. I glanced up at him, seeing his face stone cold and jaw clenched.

“Kaugomme?”

He jumped and looked back down at me. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s just that I fear that the whole answer to your question may burden you more than enlighten, given these circumstances…”

“Just tell me.”

“Her name is Haley Abadeer. She’s Marshall Lee’s mother, as well as the most powerful mind magic user in the multiverse, and also the head of security for all beings.”

“I don’t see how that’s so bad.”

“Then I’ll just leave it at that.”

“No. Tell me. You told me there’s more so now I have to know.”

“There’s no more to tell.”

Realizing that I was fighting a losing battle, I huffed and crossed my arms tighter. I noticed that they were significantly lighter. “Oh,” I said, uncrossing my arms and struggling to prop myself up. “I suppose my load _is_ a little lighter now.”

“I’d suppose so as well.”

“I guess I’m supposed to thank you for your help.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He stood up, brushing the dust from his pants. “I suppose I’ll go find Marshall and tell him that you’re awake.”

I nodded. “I suppose you will.”


	8. Awake and Alive

A little while later I mustered up the strength to sit up and push myself up off the cot. Marcie was still passed out next to me and I placed my hand on her shoulder for a moment before beginning the slow, strenuous walk out of the hut and into the village. Marshall was walking toward me accompanied by Infernus, Kaugomme, and Bonnie. He looked moderately irritated, more so than normal, I suppose, but his expression softened a bit when he saw me up and about. I noticed that everyone had shed their heavier coats from back on Earth and wondered who had taken mine after my collapse, though I didn’t linger on the thought as Marshall and company approached.

“Is Marceline awake yet?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He scowled and I noticed the frown lines creasing the corners of his mouth. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, considering the state of the city right now,” he muttered. “Security has been getting tighter and tighter, and it’ll probably be a day before we can even get in to see Haley.” His eyes darted around the village. “Not to say we won’t try to at least get a hotel for the night in the meantime. I’d rather not stay in one place for too long.”

I followed his eyes around the village, noticing black, charred bodies with ashen hair and dead red eyes slinking around the shadows. I jumped. Was this what happened to someone who stayed in hell for too long? As I took a closer look around the shacks in the village, I noticed that all of the buildings seemed to be made of the same, leathery, ashen material. I stopped myself from gagging. From the corner of my eye, I saw the crippled figure of an old man collapse, and my suspicions were confirmed as the livelier of the villagers dashed to pick him up and rip him to shreds, taking any of the pieces they could get and running with them into their own homes. I tried to avert my eyes as the heaviness in my limbs return.

“Let’s get going, then,” I choked out.

_BdMgSbDbGs_

The trek toward the city was a long one full of lots of stops for Marcie and me until eventually Gomme and Infernus caved and carried us, at first on their backs, then in their arms when we got too tired to hold on any longer.

It must have taken hours for us to get to the city gates, but time didn’t seem to change at all. The dreary gray light neither lightened nor darkened. There was no life beyond us and the muffled moaning of unfortunate souls that this place was made up of.

There were two guards at either side of the gate, made alert by our approach. Their skin was gray like the surrounding area and wrinkled in odd places. They had wide necks and no chins and their teeth appeared to be fused with their skin. They each had five arms, three growing from one side and two from the other. They didn’t appear to be wearing clothes but they didn’t seem to need any with the thick, armor-like skin covering their torsos and stalky legs.

“Stop,” the one on the right called out, its voice sounding deep like gravel. “State your business.” Its S’s hissed out longer than they should have, his vowels gurgling into each syllable like a hungry stomach.

“We are here to see Haley Abadeer, on business,” Marshall explained coolly.

The guards slid their thin gray eyes toward each other in an exchange before the other one looked back and addressed us. “What is your name?” it groaned.

A look of irritation mixed with amusement flashed through Marshall’s red gaze. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “What kind of loyal subject does not recognize his king?”

 _King_ , he said. Now, I knew that he was apparently some kind of a big deal in the real world, but for some reason king had not been on my list of possibilities for Marshall’s identity.

The guards appeared surprised, or at least as surprised as they could look with their limited access to facial expressions. “The _Son_ , Mahrsaella Abadeer? This is nonsense,” the first guard said. “Everyone knows that Mahrsaella died centuries ago.”

“Is that what she told you?” Marshall said, expression indifferent. “My, how her creativity has diminished over the years.” Marshall’s pupils dilated. “Now would you hurry up and let us in? I’m getting impatient.”

The guards stiffened suddenly before returning to their posts, the one on the left pulling a lever that forced the huge doors of the gate open. We went inside wordlessly and the stone doors closed behind us.

All I could see was red. Stone buildings rose all around me, adorned in signs and lights that were all but blinding. Nothing was in English, but some of the symbols seemed familiar, likely similar to some runes that I somehow always recognized on sight. Marshall strode down the streets like he owned the place, and shadowy gray figures cast us suspicious glares wherever we went. I prompted Infernus to set me down and let me walk, fascinated by my new surroundings for just long enough to forget my woes. Marshall led us several blocks inside the city to a large, well-off  building, its glowing sign containing a symbol that looked like the rune for “sleep,” so I could only assume that it was a hotel of sorts. He pressed his hand onto a circle in the middle of the solid rock door. A five-pointed star appeared for a moment before the door slid open.

The inside of the building was abnormal, yet somehow… lavish. Cool violet came from nowhere and lit the interior’s patterned, marble-like tile and finely textured lavender walls. The lobby area was mostly empty, with the exception of some tall pillars that went up into nothingness. Bizarre bouquets made up of flowers and other objects that I couldn’t quite place hung on the walls with square beads connecting them. There were a few couches in odd shapes and sizes scattered about the room in five different locations, each with a glass table in the middle and glowing red candles. The front desk lay opposite the room that somehow seemed much too big for the size of the building. The heaviness in my limbs seemed to return to me and I had to lean against Infernus to walk to one of the more ordinary-sized couches.

“You’ll be able to rest, soon,” Infernus mumbled near my ear. I nodded weakly to let him know I heard him before leaning my weight up against his arm. He stiffened for a moment but relaxed after he realized I wasn’t getting up.

After a few minutes, or maybe a little bit longer, I sensed movement and opened my eyes to see Marshall striding toward Infernus and me, a key of sorts in hand. I shifted up off of Infernus to better focus on Marshall’s face. He still looked more irritated than usual but that seemed to be the only face that he could make in this realm so I’d come to accept it and expect it.

“Come on, I got us a room,” Marshall said shortly.

I struggled to my feet. Marshall looked at me with disinterest and sighed.

“Tch.” He snapped his fingers and I was in a different room. The style was similar to the lobby I’d been in earlier, but in the form of a living room. The lighting was warmer than in the lobby, and the furniture much more comfortable. I felt relatively lightweight inside the room and I wondered if there was some sort of spell cast on it. I was sitting up on a couch. Next to me Marcie was laying down and Bonnie sat by Marcie’s feet. Across from us Infernus sat, twirling a ball of fire between his thumb and index finger, an unfamiliar glow in his eyes. It must have been an effect of his magic.

Infernus didn’t look up as I cleared my throat.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Marshall got tired of lugging all of you deadweights around, so he stopped your time for a little bit while we went up to our room. Don’t worry, you’ve only been out for ten minutes or so,” he replied, without looking up. Was his hair a shade lighter than usual?

“Where’s Marshall, then?” I said. “And Kaugomme for that matter.”

“Abadeer and Gomme went downtown to request an audience with Haley,” he said, “whenever she feels the obligation to see us, that is. They’ll be back in a few hours. Asked me to hang back so I could keep an eye on all of you, in case you’re tempted to go loping around the city on your own. I told them that you couldn’t make it out of the door if you wanted to but they insisted.”

“Of course they did,” I muttered.

“So tell me, Fionna; how does it feel to be the pactmaker for our little group of misfits?” Infernus inquired, eyes flickering up from his hands for a moment.

“Why do you ask?”

Infernus grinned the tiniest bit, not in a particularly sly way or anything, but not genuine either. “Curious,” he said.

“You never seemed to come across as the curious type.”

“People have masks to wear for every occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Taking notes.”

I frowned. “Does this have anything to do with the last time you attempted to kill Pride?”

His face mirrored mine. “No, it has nothing to do with that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then forget I asked.”

I let the silence hang in the air, noting how Marcie and Bonnie had not moved for the entirety of the conversation.

“Are they frozen?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“So they can’t hear anything we’re saying.”

Infernus nodded.

“What’s the relationship between Marshall and his mother?”

Infernus raised his eyebrows, hands stilling for a moment. “You just cut right to the chase don’t you.”

“And you try very hard to avoid my questions.”

Infernus sighed and leaned back, the fire in his hand disappearing and the glow in his eyes dulling. “Marshall’s relationships are his business.”

“So is that it? Not even going to give me a sliver of information about it, huh? I already know that they’re not on good terms and all.”

“I don’t have the right to go telling you about his backstory.” I was about to object but he stopped me. “But I’ll warn you about one thing. Don’t go digging too deep into Marshall’s history… I’m afraid you won’t much like what you find.”

I grimaced but nodded, standing up to leave. “I’m going to go ahead and turn in,” I said. “It’s been a… long day.”

“That it has,” Infernus agreed.

I bid him good night and shut the bedroom door behind me, with sleep as the last thing on my mind.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

Cloudy pink haze fogged up my vision when I opened my eyes. I walked forward through a vast field of nothingness, mind hazy with sleep so that I didn’t quite remember what I was supposed to be doing right then.

The words “ _Memotorium Ekszibhus_ ” hung dully in my head, and I recited them over and over with no real idea about what they meant. Shadowy figures walked through me and all around me, bumping into my shoulders and catching their needlelike claws on my skin, cutting starlike patterns into scars barely beginning to heal.

I stumbled through the bodies, my mind becoming less and less clear as I mumbled the phrase to meaninglessness. I felt myself beginning to fade when I noticed a silhouette in front of me, unmoving, separate from the shadows in the haze. I approached the figure with a new sense of purpose, though my mind still screamed for rest.

My hands reached out and caught flesh. I spun the silhouette around and came face-to-face with Marshall. He looked surprised for a moment but his expression quickly flickered from that to anger.

“ _You don’t belong here_ ,” he gritted out. “ _You shouldn’t be able to see me right now._ ”

I noticed then that the Marshall in front of me looked younger than the Marshall that I knew. The change wasn’t significant, more softness in his cheeks and no lines at the corners of his mouth, but who knew how many years of difference that could be for a Son.

“I’m sorry,” I said to young Marshall. “I just needed to know.”

In a second I was transported to a nursery. A child screamed from the other side of the room and a young woman held her head in her hands, weeping. The vision blurred and a young boy sprinted past me, a look of terror suggesting that he was fleeing from something. A moment later, wild dogs appeared, following the boy’s scent. I ran after the boy, though I wasn’t sure why, but when I caught up to him his hands were in front of his face and the dogs had stopped. They stood completely still, frozen mid-sprint. They boy breathed heavily and looked up, wondering why he was still alive, and then gasping at the sight of what he’d done. Another blur and a woman strikes an older boy in the face, making him fall back. The boy wiped the blood from his nose and spat at the woman. She did not flinch. I recognized her as an older version of the young woman weeping from earlier.

In another second I was in a land of ice and snow, a white-haired woman and black-haired man stood side-by-side. I couldn’t see either of their faces but they both seemed happy somehow, when a black void appeared, and the man was sucked away from the woman. I felt as though I were sucked in with him and my vision went black for a second. A new scene faded into view, and the man sat dressed in rags in a rusted cell, chains hanging from his hands and feet. He looked up at me and held my gaze, a look of pure hatred burning in his red eyes.

“ _Are you happy now_?” he growled. I stared at him wide-mouthed, unable to speak. “ _Are you_?” He jumped forward and lashed straight at me and I woke up gasping.

I shot up. The room was dark but I could feel the pain and stickiness all over my body that told me what my condition was. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my arms tight, trying not to scream. When I tried to move my legs I found that they were stuck to the sheets.

The door was forced open. My breath caught in my throat and I squinted at the light forming a soft halo around a very, very angry Marshall Lee Abadeer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeeeyyyy look at that there's some backstory.
> 
> Just in case you were wondering, the next chapter is porn. Like, over half of the chapter. There's some plot in there, I guess.... No it's totally just porn.


	9. The Devil has Exquisite Taste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eyyyy look at how long this chapter is look it's so long and... long.
> 
> AND OH WHAT'S THIS COULD IT BE porn. Yes. That is what it is.

Marshall stood in my door and stared at me with glowing red eyes. I gulped and he slammed the door behind him, muttering some phrase under his breath and I felt the room seal. He flipped on the light switch and in another second he was sitting over me, legs on either side of my waist and looking down, frowning and breathing through his teeth.

He grabbed me by my throat and forced my head back against the wall. I let out a choked sound and tried to pry his fingers from my neck with slippery red hands, but his grip was like steel.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing,” he breathed, leaning forward so that his forehead was almost against mine. “Who the fuck do you think you are,” he growled, “thinking you have the right to barge into _my_ head, _my_ memories, without my _fucking_ permission.” His nostrils flared and I let out another choked cough.

He threw me to the side of the bed and held me down by my shoulders, nails piercing already raw skin, weight pressing down on my back.

“I should kill you,” he spat into my ear. “I should just fucking kill you for what you did.” He pressed down harder and I whimpered into the sheets.

He dug his nails hard into my skin; I tried not to scream, but I failed, crying out in pain. He didn’t stop, and I didn’t think he was ever going to stop, until his weight suddenly lifted from me. I lay there gasping for a moment, trying and mustering up the strength to push myself up and look at him. He stood in the opposite corner of the room, head down and bloodied fists balled up against the wall. His breathed heavily, and his shoulders shook with each inhale.

“…I’m sor—”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he cut me off. “I know what you were thinking,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.” He slumped against his arm and leaned his head against the wall, muttering something to himself over and over again. I leaned toward him a little bit, almost tempted to get up and walk over to him, but, feeling aching in my arms and legs as I moved, I thought better of it. He kept rambling on, repeating, “I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know I know…” again and again. Marshall squinted his eyes so hard it looked like it hurt, and when he opened them his pupils were so constrained they were nonexistent. He was still muttering something under his breath—it looked like a spell—when he shouted, “ _God_ just make it _stop!_ ” and he was still.

No moving. No breathing. Nothing.

“…Marshall?” I said, forcing myself up off the bed. He didn’t respond, body rigid like a statue. “Oh god,” I whispered. What was I supposed to do? Should I go near him? Should I call for help? I walked closer to him, waving a hand near his motionless eyes. Still nothing. I sighed. Oh, what was that spell… “ _Telepatos,_ ” I said, expecting Marshall’s thoughts to come buzzing into my head. But there was nothing. I stood and stared at him in silence. He had frozen himself… but why?

I backed away from him and paced around the room a bit, holding my sticky forehead in my hand to stunt the dizziness and examining my clothes. My shirt was ruined, as were the pants I’d slept in. The bed looked to be in just as bad of shape. There was so much red everywhere that it made me sick. I scrounged around the room for a sign of a bag or something that had my clothes in it, but it didn’t look like I had anything. I settled for changing into the robe I found hanging up in the bathroom attached to my room, peeling each layer of clothing off of my body and dabbing off my skin with a towel as I changed. The cuts went so far to cover my head, my face, and the bottoms of my feet, and I shivered. I needed to be more careful in the future.

When I came back out into the room, Marshall was still frozen. I sighed and took that time to strip my bed of its pillows and sheets, frowning when I saw that the mattress was stained as well. By that time, I’d been standing much too long for the amount of blood that I’d lost and I fell against the bed, my vision spotty, head reeling and stomach churning.

I stared at Marshall sideways. I noticed that tiny scratches began to appear on his hands. They were very small, and they didn’t grow quickly at all, but I watched them as tiny drops of blood beaded up on his skin, stark red against pale white. The blood kept beading up but it didn’t dry and scab like it was supposed to. The cuts grew deeper until small beads began to clump together and drip from his hands. I closed my eyes and listened as each drop hit the hard carpet floor, like muffled rain before a big storm.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The drops stopped falling. I opened my eyes and sat up to look at him. Marshall glared right back at me, still a hard look, but much less murderous than before.

“Marshall… what was—?”

He pounded his fist against the wall. “That’s it,” he said, appearing in front of me in an instant. “You can’t control it, can you.” He stared at me unblinkingly, eyes boring into mine trying desperately to grasp for a response that was not there. I noticed that his pupils were slightly elliptical in shape, which was oddly charming in the way that simultaneously made my blood run cold. He grabbed me by the shoulders and I winced a little but he didn’t seem to notice. “The magic. You don’t control it. Do you. Well you do, but you don’t. Not the traditional way. It just comes to you, it comes to you, it just happens when you think about it. Right?” His eyes searched me wildly. He let go of me suddenly, holding his forehead with one hand. “It’s impulsive. That’s the only way it could make sense. It has to make sense. And that would mean the pact is… no, this isn’t anything like the last time that’s not guaranteed. But that would make her unstable… No, no, no that can’t happen we can’t afford to let that happen not after we waited so long.” He was pacing back and forth as he spoke. I watched him go at a momentary loss for words.

“Marshall, what are you talking about?” I said. “You aren’t making any sense.”

“Unstable… unstable… Shit, but would it really work that way? Well it’s just borrowed power so surely it would work the same.”

“What are you saying, Marshall?”

Marshall laughed, seemingly at himself, and stopped pacing. “I’m sorry, Fionna, but it appears you’ve caught my crazy.”

“I’ve what?”

“I… have some explaining to do. A lot of explaining to do.”

I stared at him expectantly and he sighed, tucking his hands into his pockets and relaxing his posture.

“As a pact maker, you act sort of as… what’s the best way to put this… You’re like a charger, but it’s more than that it’s like a… like a charger and a data reader. You provide this constant source of energy to us—humans are just oversized bundles of emotions, after all—and at the same time you get things from us, like the use of our magic. That’s the exchange, you know. But then… then you have to consider, what if the information is damaged or corrupted? A reader doesn’t just figure out what’s messed up and not. It just reads what’s on the page. Does that make sense?”

I started to nod, but it turned into a shake. “What do you mean by ‘damaged’?” I asked

“I mean.” He sighed again, sitting down next to me on the bed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I don’t really like talking about… my past so much. And I wouldn’t even be saying anything right now if it didn’t concern your safety.” He took in a deep breath, and began begrudgingly. “About a… a long time ago when I was only a hundred or so, I started noticing that I didn’t always need spells to be able to cast magic, that things kind of just started coming to me at will, or as I thought of them. At first I thought it was fantastic. Time-saving, made magic less noticeable, no hassle of memorizing spells, that sort of thing. But after a while… it started to just… turn on. And it would turn off and on randomly and I stopped being in control of it. And it was always mind-reading. _Always_ the mind-reading. Of all of the things it could have been, it had to be goddamn mind-reading.” He grumbled and held his head in his hands for a second, rubbing his temples, before looking up again. “Anyway, a couple thousand years later it didn’t get any better, and, actually, now it… it’s almost never off. I’ve tried to cast spells to cancel it out but the unconscious spellcasting has gotten stronger and stronger and I couldn’t do anything about it. I’ve just had to learn to live with it.” He leaned over his knees and hung his head, looking out of place in his own skin. I thought about reaching out a hand to comfort him but decided against it.

“So what does that mean for me?” I asked.

“It means the information, the energy that I share with you is damaged and unstable. I’m not able to control my power and you aren’t able to control it either. And so… we’ll have to find out some way to nullify your magic before it gets out of hand. You’re at the beginning phases of it now, but it’s only a matter of time. And you,” he paused to look me over, a mixture of pain and something else in his eyes as he scrutinized my every cut, “your body isn’t equipped to handle that much power at once.”

“I… wow,” I said. I pushed a hand through my hair and looked at nothing in particular. “Wow, that’s a lot to take in.” I held my hand to my face and sighed. I felt already formed scabs and felt the urge to pick at them, like they were already healed, which was good that I wouldn’t have cuts all over my face whenever I saw Bonnie and Marcie again, but I wondered how they’d managed to heal so quickly. “So… how do you plan to nullify it? My magic?”

“Well, for now I can cast a cancelling spell on a necklace or some other object for you to wear, and that’ll work for a while, but if your magic continues to get stronger like this we may have to think of something else.”

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Oh.” I looked down and stared at my hands, noticing the barely healed cuts that marred my skin. So different parts of my body healed at different intervals, it seemed.

“You don’t happen to have a piece of jewelry or something like that on you right now, do you?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not really big on that stuff.”

He frowned and looked down at his own hands, working one of his rings off of his middle finger. “That’s fine, we can use this,” he said, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “Will it fit?”

I took it from him and examined it. “On my thumb, probably.” His fingers may be long and skinny, but his hands were still much bigger than mine.

“That’ll do.” He took it back from me and examined it. It was a simple silver ring, a rubbed-off engraving on the inside that appeared to be in the same language as Ordolholm’s, though it was hard for me to tell exactly. “Hmm, if we want it to last for a while, it’ll have to be a pretty strong spell… I need more power.” He stared at me expectantly, pupils dilating and contracting.

“W-what are you looking at me for?” I squeaked.

He smirked. “What do you think? You remember the options, the things that I feed off of, don’t you?” he hummed.

“I, ah, may need a quick reminder,” I said.

His smirk widened. “Why of course, honey. They’re all very simple things, really. I can see why they may have slipped your mind.” He sat up straighter as he spoke, eyes never leaving mine. “There’s pain.” He grabbed me by the wrists a little too hard and yanked me over to him, so that I was sitting in his lap. “Anger.” He pulled me closer to him, pulling my arms around his back. “Blood.” He let go of my wrists and softly tilted my head to the side, brushing his nose against my neck. “And _sex_.” He kissed my neck, sucking on the scabbed skin and I gasped, trying to push away, but he had an iron grip on me. He looked down at me through long eyelashes, eyes a deep, liquid red. “Or maybe all four.”

He flipped us around so that he was positioned over me. He kissed me roughly and after a moment I found myself kissing back, for some ungodly reason, closing my eyes and letting him have his dominance.

“You better not be using compulsion on me,” I gasped, when I had the chance.

He chuckled against my lips. “If I were going to use compulsion on you I’d compel you not to talk so much,” he mumbled, taking my lips with his again as he felt up my sides through the robe. He pulled down the fabric around my shoulder and kissed my collarbone. I gasped as I felt sharp teeth biting down around the bone, drawing blood, a tingly sensation spreading throughout my limbs.

“Really, Fionna? You really _do_ have a pain kink, don’t you,” Marshall asked incredulously. I blushed and averted my gaze as best I could.

“Sh-shut up,” I said, biting my lip so not to cry out when he bit me again.

“Not that I’m complaining or anything. It certainly makes life easier for me,” he growled.

Why me? Of all of the people in this world, why did it have to be me.

This had to be a really awkward, sexy nightmare.

“Oh, so now you’re dreaming about me?” he cooed, untying the front of my robe but not removing it yet.

“Fuck off.”

“You don’t seem too nervous,” he said, ignoring me and trailing a finger down the middle of my chest down to my naval and back again. “Have you done this before, love?”

I scoffed. “Never with the spawn of Satan,” I retorted.

“Well, I’d hope not. Most of my brothers are less than likable characters. Although, I’ve seen you and Infernus getting along quite well recently.”

I rolled my eyes. “What, getting jealous?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” He leaned back for a moment to unbutton his own shirt and throw it off behind him. “I hear he’s not a bad fuck. Though I have to say he’s really getting on in years. What is he, 3000? 3500? Somewhere around there. I’d be careful if I were you. Wouldn’t want to get too crazy with him. Might throw out his back.” He smirked. Was I staring? I think I was staring. I’d seen him shirtless before, I was sure of it, but I’d never just blatantly stared at him before. “See something you like, honey?”

There were scars. So many scars. And not like the little baby-ass scratches, no, this guy looked like he’d been stabbed in the chest thirty-seven times in the middle of a rusty nail factory that was also on fire. There was a burn scar across his left shoulder that faded into a slash through his chest. There were marks down either of his sides that looked to have come from wild animals, and what looked awfully similar to a bite scar on his right hip. All these damn imperfections and the man still looked like he was chiseled from stone by Michelangelo in the 1500s—and, hell, maybe he had been for all I knew—which did a great number on my own self-confidence. Was this guy even fucking real? What is life.

How did he even have all of those scars in the first place? Wasn’t he supposed to be some super-being with magical healing powers and such? They must not have been normal scars. I thought back to the image of a young Marshall being chased by dogs and I shivered.

“You humans are always getting sidetracked,” Marshall said, leaning back down over me again and kissing my jaw. “Relax.” He kissed my opposite cheek. “Let go.” He pushed the robe off of the front of my body and I inhaled sharply at the sudden cold. “Let your body do the thinking for you.”

He kissed me again with a new sense of desperation. I could almost feel him feeding off of the energy, movements stronger and sharper with each passing moment, or maybe I was just getting hazy. His hands were all over me, not bothering to be careful. He grabbed my hip and my ribcage, where the seals of the pact were scarred into my skin, and electricity shot through my body. My nerves became live-wires and everywhere he touched left my skin ablaze. His hand found my chest and I gasped against his lips as he touched me, coaxed my body into a squirming mess beneath him. His other hand went to where my hip met my thigh, rubbing small circles into the soft skin with his thumb, which kind of tickled and was a big turn-on at the same time for me so that was kind of weird in an arousing sort of way.

His mouth left mine and started kissing along my jaw and my neck and down to my chest, taking me between his teeth. A small moan escaped my lips and I could feel him smirking. His hand wandered between my legs, touching me softly, and my breath caught in my throat. Damn was I glad I shaved last week.

It happened so fast I didn’t even feel it. Both of my hands were pinned above my head by one of his, while the other one touched me, rubbing me hard and fast on that one sweet spot and leaving me squirming beneath him. I started to spread my legs, but I caught myself, conflicted on how far I was really willing to go with him.

“Just think the word, and I’ll stop,” he whispered, kissing me softly and slowing down again.

“…You’re not gonna get me pregnant are you,” I said after a pause.

He snickered. “Of course not. There’s a spell for everything, darling,” he replied.

I rolled my shoulders and relaxed my arms. “What the hell, let’s just go for it, then.”

I didn’t have to tell him twice. He kissed my neck with criminal passion, using one hand to hold himself up as he unbuttoned his pants, pulling back for a moment to throw them on the floor with his boxer briefs. I tried not to stare. I really did. But his unfairly defined v-line was like an arrow pointing directly at his crotch. He raised an eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything, to my relief. He leaned over me and kissed me again, this time more slow and passionate. I felt intoxicated by his touch, high on pheromones and sweat. He pulled back just a few inches and his eyes bore into mine. One of his hands slid up the outside of my leg and stopped on my hip.

“Talk to me,” he said, his thumb rubbing circles on my hip bone.

“I thought you didn’t like my snotty remarks,” I replied, attempting to sound snide but breath catching in my throat at the sight of Marshall’s expression.

He looked at me through hooded eyes and traced his lips along my jawline and I extended my neck beneath him. “I want to hear your voice,” he rumbled next to my ear. He pulled me up to him and I gasped when our hips connected.

“What do I say, then?” I whispered, eyes fluttering closed as he rocked his body against mine slowly.

“Tell me what you want to feel.” He kissed my jaw softly.

“Everything.” His other hand teased my entrance; I thought I might faint.

“Uh-huh?”

“Like, I bet you fuck like a sex god or something. The anticipation is killing me.”

He chuckled, inching a finger in slowly. “I can feel it.” He licked his lips. “Your emotions are delicious. So intense, savory-sweet.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head back. “I could just devour you whole,” he said through a smirk that made me shiver.

He opened his eyes, a blinding ring of crimson around dilated pupils. He pushed himself in without warning, making me gasp. He moved in and out slowly, testing me, at first. We both moaned at the sensation. I spread my legs farther apart and tilted my hips up toward him. His hands found my waist and he gripped me almost painfully as he began quickening his pace.

“S-shit,” I whispered, my toes curling, hands gripping the sheets. “Shit that’s—ah!—shit!”

“Yeah? If you’re this excited already I don’t see how you’re gonna last,” Marshall growled. He grabbed my leg and pulled it around his waist, moving deeper and faster than before, barely leaving me room to breathe. He was so deep. It should have been painful but I felt high as a kite. Warm pleasure pulsed through my body. I gripped the sheets and threw my head back, breathing hard and struggling to keep in little sighs and moans.

“You like it rough, don’t you?” He clicked his tongue at me. “Bad little girl.” I would have conjured up some witty reply to Marshall’s dirty talk but I was too busy getting my brains fucked out to think properly. “What, no words?  Have I rendered the great Fionna the Human speechless?” he chuckled. My only reply was a raised middle finger and another leg wrapped around Marshall’s waist.

My heels dug into Marshall’s back as the new angle had him pounding straight against my sweet spot. I gripped his shoulders and buried my nails in his skin, whispering obscenities when I felt myself getting close.

“Come for me, baby,” he growled, sending me right over the edge. I threw my head back and gasped, clenching around him as I rode out my orgasm, finally relaxing and falling back against the bed.

In the next second Marshall had me turned onto my stomach, spreading my legs in one swift movement before grabbing my arms behind my back with one hand and holding the seal with the other.

“Wh-what are—ah!” I gasped when he pushed himself back into me, over-sensitive from the last time so that my body shuddered with each thrust. It was overwhelming to the point that I felt tears in my eyes, but underneath that was the electricity pulsing through my body that turned my thoughts to mush.

“Oh, god, Marshall,” I breathed, already feeling myself teetering on the edge. “Fuck me.” I held out for just a few more thrusts before I came, back arching and muscles convulsing around him for the second time that night as I yelled something that probably wasn’t even a real word. Marshall was right behind, hissing something in a different language with the final thrust as he came inside of me. He fell onto the bed next to me, breathing hard and smirking like a twelve year old that stole candy from a gas station.

We lay there panting in the afterglow, the hot smell of sex filling the room. I needed a moment for my body to calm down, come back from being so sensitive.

“Shit,” Marshall huffed. I turned my head over toward him. His eyes were insanely bright; he looked… alive. “That was the best fuck I’ve had in a long time.”

“Yeah,” I breathed back. “Yeah.” I shifted onto my side to face him better. “Let’s go again.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Right now? Did you forget why we did this in the first place? I haven’t made your ring yet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and I bet it’ll still be there waiting for you in the morning.”

He smirked at me. “You drive a hard bargain.”

I shrugged. “I learn from the best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry  
> #superhighschoollevelvirgin
> 
> I'm not actually sorry.
> 
> Chapter 10 is under way! And it has plot! And character development! And lots of backstory! So yey~


	10. A Thousand Ways to Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time for the group's audience with Haley finally arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: depression, self-harm, death, mentions of suicide

“So what was with all of that… crazy rambling from before?” I asked him. Marshall and I were splayed out, naked on my stripped bed, staring at the ceiling. We’d been sitting there for an hour or two, or maybe it had only been a few minutes, I couldn’t be sure. Marshall had already cast the suppression spell on the ring and I wore it on my thumb, twisting it around mindlessly as I focused on nothing in particular. My cuts had long since scabbed over and healed, leaving only pale white lines latticed over my skin.

“My what? Oh…” he said, remembering. “Oh, that. It’s a side-effect from the spell that I cast on myself. It makes the user temporarily… incapable of interior thought, and thus has to rely on outward processing to think. It only lasts for a couple of minutes, but I see how that might have been weird with you not knowing what was going on.”

“And before that?”

“Before that?”

I looked at him expectantly.

“Oh… before that…”

“Was that… your magic getting out of hand?”

“Yeah… something like that.”

A long silence passed. I continued to twist the ring around my thumb, sliding it on and off again, noticing the cloudy feeling in my chest that arose whenever I had it on. “What about your scars?” I asked. “I mean, you're immortal, right? Shouldn't they just heal up right after you get them?”

Marshall stiffened slightly, an indescribable emotion falling across his face and he appeared lost for a moment. He shook his head suddenly. “Sorry. I don’t really get that kind of question very often.”

“With all of the women you've slept with I find that hard to believe.”

He smirked but it didn't touch his eyes. “Most of the women I sleep with don't know that I'm immortal.”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, averting my gaze. “So you’ve never really had anyone asking for the truth before.” I looked down at my hands. “Forget I asked.”

“No, you wanted to know so I'll tell you.”

I looked up at him. His face was rather empty, unreadable eyes the closest things to emotions he wore. I recognized it as a mask he often put on, whenever he was trying to hide. I waited for him to speak on his own.

“It's true I don't normally scar, unless someone hurts me with magic. But even those wounds usually clear up in a few years, unless they’re fatal.”

“Fatal? As in, you _died_?” I asked, pushing myself up with my elbows.

“Yeah, that's what the word ‘fatal’ tends to mean.”

I shook my head and stared at my lap. “That's crazy.”

“I suppose it is.”

“So...” I looked up at him, staring at his marred body through new eyes. “How many times have you... ‘died’?”

“Seventeen,” he answered immediately, like he expected it.

Awed, I found myself reaching out to touch him. I let my hand wander across the burn on his shoulder that left his skin slightly twisted around his collar bone. He grabbed my hand and guided it across the bone, down his chest to the slash crossing his upper torso, along the scratches on his sides, onto the bite on his hip, and back up to his throat where he had a slit straight down the skin over his trachea. He captured my eyes with his as he held our hands up on his neck.

'The burn is from a witch that attempted to murder me when I was 500,” he started. “The slash across my chest was from a creature in the wilderness of Distopiate, the realm that Gomme originates from.” He slid my hand up to the side of his face, and I found myself leaning in closer to him, turning to lie on my side. He took my other hand in his and brought it to his thigh.

“When I was 700 a man tried to kill me by ripping my body apart.” I felt the edges of a wide, uneven welt on his leg. “Two-hundred years after that, he tried it again. Then, just five years after that, I was caught in an unnatural avalanche.” He paused to take a deep breath, moving my hand back up higher on his waist. “The scratches down my sides are from…” he sighed, “from the dogs that you saw before, in my head. The bite was from a serpent, conjured up by another old witch, about six-hundred years ago.” He brought my hand up to his temples and pushed it back into his hair. “There’s a few more on my back, one where someone had me impaled on top of a chapel, one from a magical lightning strike, some that I can’t even remember anymore, but this one,” he squeezed the hand he’d brought up to his head and I felt my thumb across a small indent right above his ear. “This one right here.” His eyes grew clouded and I saw his irises dim, a smirk pulling one corner of his mouth. “That one was all me.”

My throat felt tight and I could feel my stomach in my chest. I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t even know if it was right to say anything. I felt my mouth move without my permission, my eyes still locked with Marshall’s. “… _Why_?” I choked out.

His smirk widened for a moment before fading. I knew I shouldn’t have asked; it really wasn’t any of my business, why a man would want to kill himself. I could have guessed why, and I should have just left it at that. He let go of my hands, but I held his face for a bit longer, an apology at the tip of my tongue. He stopped me, placed his hands on either side of my head and let out a gusty sigh. An overwhelming sense of despair, helplessness, guilt washed over me as my ears were assaulted by an endless number of voices, all screaming, desperate to be heard by someone, something, anything that would listen. I felt like my brain was going to implode. I squeezed my eyes shut and struggled to hold back a shriek of agony as I felt something metal and cold against my head.

The sound of a trigger being pulled.

A bang.

I opened my eyes, blinking away tears as Marshall’s face came back into view. His face was void of expression, waiting to see my own reaction following the initial aftershock of the vision.

I shut my eyes and took in a shuddering breath. “ _Oh_ ,” I said, unable to add anything more.

Marshall blinked his eyes slowly at me.

“So what happens, next, then? After you die?”

He let go of my head and sat up, crossing his legs on the bed and leaning over his knees. “It’s dark, _so_ dark. It feels like being underwater, and wanting to breathe but not feeling the relief when you do. And it’s so empty. Empty and endless. It feels like eternity, until you wake up, and then it feels like no time at all. Until you start to think about it. And you think about how for a second, or a minute, hour, day, week, month, year… you didn’t exist. You become nothing. You can’t see, smell, hear, feel, taste, think. You don’t have a name. Feelings. Memories. You aren’t. And then you have to come back and… act like normal. Act like that wasn’t the most horrible experience in your entire existence. Seek revenge and find the drive to feel again, like that wasn’t just… the scariest thing in the world to you. Not existing. Not even being able to wonder if you’ll ever come back. Becoming an idea, instead of a person. And it’s cold. Cold and dark and forever…” He trailed off, looking hollow.

Never before had I seen another person become so vulnerable, tear down their walls as far as he had in that moment. I let that feeling hang in the air, sink in and become a part of both of us.

“I, um, I’m sorry,” I said after a while.

He shook his head, straightening his back and rolling his shoulders as he turned to look at me. “It can’t be helped now. No use mulling over what we can’t change,” he said. He pushed himself off of the bed and picked his clothes up off of the floor and began redressing. I leaned over and picked the robe up off of the floor, frowning at the spots of blood that stained the inside.

“Don’t worry about the room,” he said as he buttoned up his shirt. “The maids here are used to it, though, usually for different reasons…”

“That’s hardly comforting,” I replied.

“And I guess you need some real clothes to put on.” He looked me over as I tied the bath robe around my waist. “Unless you just want to walk around like that from now on.”

I shot him an icy glare.

“What, it’s a good look for you,” he chuckled, heading for the door. “I’ll be right back. I won’t make you walk out half naked to find clothes.” He shut the door, opening it immediately after, my bag in hand.

“That was fast.”

“I said I’d be right back, didn’t I?” he cooed, bringing his hand to his mouth to lick a scratch.

“Oh, you just didn’t want anyone to see you.”

“I use magic recklessly and I have no regrets,” he said, tossing my bag over my way. “Now get dressed. We have an audience with Haley in two hours.”

I sighed, digging through the bag for some underwear and pants.

“What, are you just gonna stand there and watch?” I asked when I noticed Marshall still standing there waiting.

“Is that not an option?” he said. I threw a shirt at his face. He smirked and threw it back at me. “Fine, fine. I’ll be outside. Make it fast, will you?” He stepped out and left me alone to dress, which also gave me a few moments to think. I twisted the ring around my thumb, relishing in the foggy sensation it brought to the edges of my mind.

“Empty and endless, huh…”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

“ _Fionna_!” Bonnie called as soon as I opened the door. She tackled me in a hug and I struggled not to fall backwards. She pulled back at me and stared at me with cold seriousness in her face. “Is everything okay? I heard yelling. Did he hurt you? If he even touched you I swear to god…”

“I’m fine, Bonnie, I’m fine,” I said, shrugging her arms off of me and taking a step back. “He was just… explaining some things to me, that’s all. He had to make this ring for me, too…” I trailed off.

“For the magic controlling thing?” she asked. “Infernus told us that’s what he suspected was happening to you. I’m sorry we didn’t notice sooner. We should have been paying more attention.”

“No, no, it’s okay!” I said, waving my arms out in front of me. “I mean, it was only a recent sort of thing. I wasn’t really sure what was happening myself, so, just, don’t worry about it, okay?” I shot her a quick smile before glancing around the room. “Where’s Marcie?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s laying down in the chair over there,” Bonnie said, jutting a thumb back behind her. “She still feels a little weak, so I told her to rest some more.”

“I see.” I nodded, thinking back to the conversation Gomme and I’d had about class and the side-effects of the realm. Could it be that humans were of a higher class than the fallen? I found that somewhat hard to believe, but at the same time it made sense.

 _I’ll have to go over the social classes with you later, won’t I_ , Marshall thought at me. _And some more basic history, while I’m at it, huh. You humans are so ill-educated._

 _Fuck off, Marshall_ , I replied.

 _Already did_ , he thought, winking at me.

_You are repulsive._

“So, is everything ready for our audience?” Infernus asked, pulling the conversation back to the task at hand.

“It’s not like there’s much to prepare, other than ourselves, mentally,” Gomme noted.

Marshall’s face shifted to his scowling, business-like expression. “I guess we can get going, then,” he said. “It’ll be faster if we just knock you out,” he added, to me.

I sighed. “Whatever. It’s not like we can stop you anyway.”

He smirked at me smugly. “Look who’s learning.” Then he snapped.

 

In the next moment, I felt impossibly heavy. We had appeared in front of a large inner gate, something resembling a mixture of a castle and a prison. A large set of double doors separated us from a stairway that reached up to a tall gray tower.

“There’s a nullifying spell cast in this area. No magic,” Infernus said, looking at me over his shoulder as he set Bonnie on her feet. Gomme held Marcie in his arms seemingly effortlessly, though I could see the sweat forming on his brow. Marshall stood behind me as he had apparently been the one to carry me down.

The doors opened and two large guards, similar to the ones we’d seen outside the gate, ushered us inside. Another two guards opened the doors to the tower which was nothing but a glorified spiral staircase that went up to a platform that I couldn’t see. They closed the doors behind us and we started the long trek upwards.

“Talk about dramatic,” Gomme muttered, “make us climb a mile into the sky for some bitch to glare at us while we fail to convince her of our grand plan.”

“She can probably hear you, you know,” Infernus said, matter-of-factly. “The old witch has super senses. She probably hangs out up there just so she doesn’t have to hear the whining of pansies like you all day,” he jabbed.

“You’re not the one lugging a 700 pound weight around,” Gomme snapped. “Either this chick has enough worries to fill the ocean or she’s lower on the charts than we made her out to be.”

“Will you two quit your bitching for two goddamn seconds or are you planning on going all day?” Marshall said impatiently. The two men frowned and shifted their gazes forward once again.

The tread up the tower continued on in silence. There was another set of large wooden doors at the top, unguarded from the outside. They opened as we approached, and we stepped into a room, lavish and spacious. The walls were decorated in shades of red and the pearl floors covered by intricate carpets. There was a black runner that led to a raised platform, where the silhouette of a woman stood tall and rigid.

"Advance," she bellowed, her voice echoing off of the high ceiling. Our group moved forward toward her, Marshall in the lead and Gomme and Infernus flanking him on either side. I saw the woman smirk as we approached. She wore black-framed glasses and a dark gray women's suit with ornate designs decorating the lapels. Her hair was pulled back tight, seeming to stretch her skin over her sharp features, highlighting her high cheekbones and angled eyes.  She held her hands on her hips and shook her head, clicking her tongue as we approached. "My, my. Take a look at what the cat dragged in. When they told me you'd requested an audience with me, I almost didn't believe it to be true. And yet, here you are. Mahrsaella Leeh Abadeer, crawling back to Mommy after all these years.” She flashed him a menacing grin, dripping with contempt and pity. Infernus and Kaugomme exchanged a look of discomfort, and I felt the whole room shift in unease. “I see your charm has only grown since I saw you last."

Marshall narrowed his eyes and frowned, unmoving.

"Ah but you know what they say. Beauty is only skin deep. Your manners don't appear changed at all." Haley ran her eyes across our group, eyes settling on me. "Oh! Would you look at that! Is this your pact holder?” She appeared in front of me in an instant, hands going to touch the ends of my hair. I cringed away from her and she smiled. “My, what a beauty! Much nicer than the last one I might add."

Marshall's glare held steady as Infernus rushed to make peace if the tension. "Lady Abadeer, it is wonderful to see you again, looking so well. We have come to discuss with you the issue of-"

"I know why you're here," she interrupted, a cold business tone seeping its way back into her voice as she stepped away from me to address the Sons. "I've been waiting for you three to make an appearance, actually. I'm having your passports readied as we speak.” She walked in front of us slowly as she spoke, heels clicking on the hard tile. She stopped in front of Marshall, a bit too close to him for anyone’s comfort. “I just wanted to have a little chat before you were on your way. It's been _so_ long since I got to see my precious son. Tell me, Marshall, how have these past 400 years been treating you? Any new _scars_ I haven't seen?"

Marshall could hold his tongue no longer. "Silence, wench," he snarled, his lip curling.

For a moment, Lady Abadeer feigned hurt, but the expression was quickly traded with amusement. "Oh, it used to be so easy to get a rise out of you, son. Really? Is that all you have to say to your poor old mommy?"

"I have said all I need to say to you," he growled, looking strangely disappointed.

In a moment lady Abadeer was clutching Marshall by his face, leering over him as she suddenly appeared taller. "You unwanted _bastard_ ," she hissed. "You _child_. You _boar_. You _demon_. You _mistake_." As she spoke, the lie of her face began to dissolve. Her hair became stringy and hung over her shoulders, skin melting away and exposing muscle, tendon, bone, voice more and more rasping as her flesh thinned over her yellowing bones. "You and your insane ideas and ridiculous notions and laughable ambitions. You know this plan of yours is never going to work. You will never be strong enough to destroy that which you hate most. You couldn't even _touch_ him. You could never kill your father and even if you could you could never handle the repercussions of your actions. You are _weak_. You are _unfit_ for your objectives and you will _never_ _succeed_." Her bony fingers cut into Marshall's face but he remained stoic, emotionless.

“M-Marshall—” I stuttered out, but I cut myself off as I had no idea what to say.

" _You_ did this to me, _you_ did. _You_ are the reason I suffer. It’s _your_ fault. You should be _dead_. You should have never been _born_. You, _disgusting,_ _unlovable trash_."

Marshall stared directly into her eyes lifelessly. "Die in misery," he said, grabbing her hand and snapping it backwards and throwing her back against her pedestal. Haley sneered as she picked herself back up away, her form returning to its former façade and hand cracking back into place.

She returned to her post on the platform above and glared down at us. "Your passports are waiting just outside with a mage that will open the portal to Midnaught.” Her eyes could freeze a fire. “You may leave, with the knowledge that there is no way you can succeed. Try and try again. You will fail, each and every time. You will never be good enough. You will never win. You are incapable of victory." She glowered at us one last time before disappearing, leaving us shaken and discomforted.

Marshall rolled his eyes and turned around. “Come on. Let’s leave while she’s still in a good mood.”

As we approached the large double doors, I couldn’t help but look back, and my eyes fell upon the figure of an old woman, her head bowed, shoulders slumped, and arms clutching her body. She was shaking.


	11. The Devil has the Perfect Lover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this at 3 in the morning. What.
> 
> Yes, yes I know. I’m a bad person. But in my defense I just got back from Japan less than a month ago only to hop into a car a week later to go to my orientation 2 states away, then come back for my and my best friend’s birthdays (Mine was on the sixth—YAY LEGAL ADULT-NESS—and hers is on the twelfth) and our joint birthday/going away party thing and yeah it was hectic.
> 
> But behold, a chapter! With BACKSTORY! Yey~

As it turned out, our “passports” were small beads that, when pressed into the skin of our wrists, formed swirling patterns that held the runes to a very complex spell. Haley’s mages held their arms up as they chanted the words to open up the portal to Midnaught. I watched as the tiny runes on my wrist glowed as each word was spoken, slowly illuminating my skin until the spell was done, the portal open, and we were safe to pass.

I nodded my head in thanks before following Marshall and his brothers into the void.

I felt like I was falling and flying at the same time, my body compressing and expanding simultaneously. It was a sensation I would categorize as one of my least favorite experiences I’d ever felt in life, though it only lasted for an instant, and suddenly I found myself in a wide, grassy plain.

Except, that couldn’t even _begin_ to describe the scene that lay in front of me.

Golden-green stalks of grass rolled out in every direction like soft fur, fading into the uncertain distance in a greenish haze. The land was flat but imperfect, gaping holes marring the landscape sporadically, as though they were pieces of a puzzle missing. I looked up, gasping as I found where those missing pieces went. The sky was the color of a summer lake, splashed with green and blue and wispy clouds, interrupted at random by blocks of floating rock, hanging above the ground like balloons tethered with invisible string. Light bounced off of the land in every which way, from the pale stone to the golden grasslands and back into the sky. I took particular note in the fact that there seemed to be no source of the light, other than the sky itself.

In the distance I saw dark shapes rising out from the grass that I assumed to be towns or cities, seeming out-of-place in this world so strange and organic that it could only be nature in its purest, unadulterated form.

I couldn’t comprehend it. How could this wonderful world of creation be home to the man that invented destruction?

 _You’re thinking too loudly, darling_ , I felt Marshall’s warm voice whisper into my head, but paid him no mind, returning my attention to the realm surrounding me.

 _Midnaught_.

“Oh well this is just great,” I heard Kaugomme gripe from behind me. I turned to see his eyes hooded, expression unimpressed. “If I’m not mistaken, that city right up there is the southwest check-in station, which means that old hag dropped us on the _exact_ opposite side of the realm we needed to be.”

Suddenly the magic of the realm was lost as an air of irritation settled over the group. I heard Infernus sigh in front of me, shaking his head.

“Then I suppose we’d best start heading toward it,” he said, starting the trek forward without looking back.

As we walked I noticed Marcie was feeling much better, now that she didn’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she gladly took the lead with Bonnie by her side. I trailed behind them a few steps and the three brothers followed, Kaugomme and Marshall making light conversation that I didn’t quite feel like putting in the energy to listen into.

Bonnie and Marcie, on the other hand, seemed apt to include me in their conversation as we walked, which I was greatly thankful for. For being forced on a multi-dimensional adventure together, we hadn’t been doing nearly as much interacting as I’d’ve liked.

“I hope nobody’s gotten too worried over us back home,” Bonnie mused, after a wane in the conversation. “Lola’s probably about to explode for us not answering her texts.” She giggled slightly, though there was some strain in her voice.

“We did sort of leave without a word to anybody…” Marcie reminded her.

“Oh, god. Yeah. Lola’s definitely going to kill us when we get back,” Bonnie said, holding her forehead in her hands.

“ _If_ we ever go back, that is,” I muttered.

Bonnie and Marcie looked up at me in surprise, both unable to speak for a moment, unknowing what to say.

“W-well of _course_ we’re going back! Silly,” Marcie said, smiling my way. “We just have to… get through all of this, and we’ll be back in no time.”

“Right,” I said, not wanting to push the matter. “Back in no time.”

Bonnie frowned, not entirely convinced at my easy answer. “Hey,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder and squeezing it. “We _will_ go back at the end of this. Whatever this is, we’ll get through it. Together. We’re here with you. Every step of the way. I promise.” She let go of my shoulder and I smiled up at her.

“Thanks.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

My legs were sore from all of the walking and travelling I’d been doing for the past few days, but my body was buzzing with restless energy. We’d made it into the city in a couple hours’ time and were then setting ourselves up in a hotel for the night. Apparently the city was used to large groups such as ours passing through, as they had many suite options available that beat the cost of getting two or three rooms for one night, though it wasn’t like I was responsible for paying for anything, anyway.

The six of us were settled in the living room, vegetating before heading off to bed in a few hours, for the sun hadn’t quite set yet; however, I struggled to sit still. I noticed that I hadn’t gotten hungry for the past day or two, which was a bit alarming and I told myself I’d ask someone about it later. That observation had sent my mind spiraling down a road of other uncomfortable questions and observations that I really didn’t want to be focusing on. If I were still in Ordolholm, the weight of my worries would have pushed me six feet underground.

“I think I’ll take a walk,” I said suddenly, standing up and heading toward the door, pausing before I opened it. “Infernus, would you mind coming with me? I don’t want to get lost…” Which was half true. But really I just wanted someone there to ease my thoughts without a certain prying mind around to listen in. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; I just wanted to feel like I had some semblance of privacy for once, without any snide comments sneaking their way into my head. I made sure to keep that thought out of the front of my mind, however, as I requested Infernus’s presence and we walked down the few flights of stairs to the ground level. “I think I want to walk outside of the city,” I said as I pushed open wooden doors to the stone walls outside.

“Alright,” Infernus agreed easily, nodding his head and following my lead as I made my way down the main street to one of the many city gates. I didn’t let my guard down until we’d made it to the grassy flats outside, sighing in a breath of fresh, green air. Infernus and I set an easy pace as we walked along the edges of Southwest Point in silence. It was almost comfortable, except for the thoughts buzzing around in my head making it hard for me to concentrate on anything.

At last, I couldn’t keep it in anymore, the thought that kept coming back, no matter how hard I pushed it away. “How many times?” I blurted out.

Infernus looked at me quizzically. “How many times what?” he said.

“How many times have you…” but I couldn’t bring myself to complete the thought out loud.

“I’m not Abadeer, Fionna, I can’t just read your mind and answer your questions,” he said, sighing.

“…died,” I said.

Infernus instantly stiffened, slowing down his pace to a stop and looking at me with eyes that almost seemed fearful.

He opened his mouth to speak then closed it, looking down. “I—” but he stopped himself again, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. He suddenly seemed much smaller than he usually did. The worry in his brow aged him as the confliction in his eyes brought him back to childhood. “…Eight,” he finally answered. I noticed his hands clench and unclench, some sort of light coming from each fist he made.

“And Kaugomme?” I asked, my earlier restraint starting to ebb away.

“Six, I think.”

“And… Marshall?”

He took a while longer to answer the last one, a mixture of emotions coming off of him in waves so strong, the ring on my thumb could do nothing to stop me from feeling them. “More than both of us combined.”

I cringed as the number flitted through my head. _Seventeen. Seventeen deaths. Seventeen horrible, unique ends._

“What’s… what’s it like?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

Infernus flashed a wry grin toward the ground under him. “What, didn’t Marshall tell you already?”

The question was rhetorical. I didn’t expect him to go on, but he did. “It’s… worse than anything you’ve ever seen, heard of, felt before.” He shook his head, smile wavering more into a grimace as he continued to stare into the dirt. “It’s pain and agony and emptiness and loneliness and _nothingness_ and—and it just doesn’t end. It never ends.” He looked up at me, the smile on his face like a stab in the gut. “Even after you wake up. It’s still there. It’s always there. It watches you. Waits for you to come back.” He shook his head again, looking up into the sky and starting to walk again.

“It’s like a lover, the best lover you’ll ever have,” he went on. “It never leaves you alone for too long. Waits for you to come home every night, then wraps its arms around you and holds you tight the moment you’re alone. It keeps you up all night and begs you to stay in bed each morning for ‘just one more round.’ It consumes your every thought, always there at the back of your mind, always inviting you back, always waiting and waiting and waiting. It’s patient, loyal, forgiving. Everything you could ever ask for…” He trailed off and I let the silence hang between us.

“Empty and endless…” I said.

“Empty and endless.”

Neither of us spoke for a while longer, letting the weight of the conversation hang and eventually fade away. I relished in the warm air, slight breeze blowing my hair away from my face as the light in the sky began to yellow.

“So, Fionna,” Infernus started. “How are you?”

I flashed him a confused expression. “How am I? Fine, I guess?”

His gaze hardened as if he were trying to guess what I was thinking with just a look. He wasn’t nearly as good at reading people as Marshall, though, and the expression fell away after just a few moments. “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

I looked down and didn’t answer him.

He sighed and softened his expression again. “I just figure, with all that’s been going on around you, all this stuff that relies on you to work, we aren’t giving you and your emotions nearly enough attention. So I’m asking you now. How are you feeling? About all of this?”

“I’m…” I started, but I didn’t know what to say. I supposed honesty was the best route. “I guess I don’t really know. I’m still not entirely sure what all is going on or how everything works, but I know there’s no way I’ll be able to go back to my old life, so I guess there’s no use trying to fight it or regret anything.”

Infernus nodded thoughtfully. “So what about your old life, then? You were a student, right? What were you studying?”

I caught myself smiling the smallest bit. His sudden questioning rather caught me off guard, but I’d always been a fan of talking about myself. “Well, I was undecided for my first two years of college, but I eventually decided to go into education. I figured kids could learn a little from some of the bad decisions I’ve made in the past.”

Infernus smiled at me, one of the more genuine expressions I’d ever seen him wear. “My mother was a teacher,” he said. “I’ve always respected teachers, because of her. They’re some of the multiverse’s most valuable people.”

I smiled back at him and nodded. “I think so, too.”

“What about your family?”

“My family?” My family was rather unremarkable, in my mind, so I had to think a bit, picking and choosing the most interesting information. “Well, we were a pretty normal family of four, I suppose. My parents had to work a lot so I wasn’t too close with them, but I have an older brother that works in architecture now, and a cat back at home. I don’t know; I’ve never really had a lot to say about my family.” I grinned sheepishly. “What about you? You seemed to speak very fondly of your mother.”

“Did I?” Infernus flashed a smirk my direction and looked ahead, into the fading sky. “My mother was the sweetest woman in the world. Couldn’t hurt a fly if she tried. She helped children in my realm learn to control their magic, as well as helping them find where their strengths lay.”

I nodded, urging him to continue.

“In my realm, Elymentos, children are given temporary names until they discover their hierarchies, that is, the order of their three or four strongest magics, and are then named by a teacher or government official in accordance to their aptitude. Naming ceremonies are a big event where I come from. My mother often helped with that,” he explained.

“So what’s your name, then? Your full name?” I asked.

“Infernus Gnomen Windor Aquer.”

“Wow, so you’re like the four main elements, then, huh?”

“Yes. It’s… actually a rather uncommon occurrence. Usually someone has strengths in similar areas, like fire, lightning and light or something of the sort. But my mother was strong in a diverse set of magics as well, and my father… well, you know. So that makes me the way I am.”

“Then… what’s your mother’s name?”

Infernus’s eyes seemed to turn a shade warmer at the question. “Fiersta Aqi Tecta Sylphie.”

“So she was a big fire-user, too.”

Infernus nodded. “The most amazing one I’ve ever seen. I strive every moment of every day to be just as strong and graceful as she was, someday.” His expression clouded over as memories coursed through him. “She was like an actress. Spells were her lines and runes her choreography. She lit up the whole world when she used her magic. It truly was a sight like no other.” The warmth faded from his gaze as he brought himself back to reality. “Sorry. I’m talking a lot. I tend not to bring up my past very often. I must be boring you.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No, no! It’s all very interesting, really. Your mother really sounds like a great person.”

“She was,” he said. “She was…”

“So… how did she die?”

Infernus sighed, his regularly stony exterior starting to come forward once again. “She was old. One autumn she fell ill and she didn’t make it to see the next spring. It was… really inevitable, with her age. I couldn’t stop by and see her as often anymore. She was almost one-thousand years old, a bit young to die for a woman of my realm but with the sickness…”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“It’s really fine. It’s been a long time since then. I moved on long ago.”

“I’m still sorry, though. Bringing up the death of a loved one is hard no matter how long it’s been.”

“I suppose so…”

Infernus and I continued our walk in silence, wordlessly deciding to start heading back the direction we came. The sky was a shade of deep emerald green, slowly fading into indigo.

“Are you not going to ask me about Hayley?” Infernus asked, all of a sudden.

“What about her?” I said.

“You just seemed so interested before. I assumed you might have some questions. About her and Abadeer, in particular.”

“I guess I just don’t really…” I trailed off, the image of the frail old woman clutching herself and sobbing taking over my thoughts. “I don’t know what to think anymore. She seemed so hateful and obviously she and Marshall don’t get along very well, but then she just…”

“Wasn’t quite what you were expecting, was it?”

I shook my head. “No, not at all.”

“To be honest, I thought the same thing when I first met her. She is… an unfortunate soul to say the least.”

“I can imagine.”

Infernus paused, casting his gaze across the grassy plains and halting his stride. “Look,” he said, pointing out toward one of the gaping holes in the landscape.

I followed his finger and watched in awe as the hole slowly started to light up from the inside. “What’s happening?” I asked.

“It’s sunrise, on the other side.”

“The other side…?” I looked back at him as he continued to stare out at the grasslands, ground being lit from below.

Infernus nodded. “South Midnaught is flat, two-sided. As one side falls into night, the other returns to day.”

“Amazing,” I said, turning back toward the landscape. As the sky grew darker, the light from the other side shined brighter, dappling the ground with bursts of light like stars and stretching out ahead of me for eternity.

_Endless, but not so empty._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hekka love Infernus and his backstory, okay? I know, I know. No FioLee this chapter. It’s just that at this point the characters’ relationship is entirely physical. As far as anything emotional runs, Fionna sees Marshall more as a puzzle, or a project that she’s trying to figure out, meanwhile Marshall sees Fionna as a giant, sentient cake with legs.
> 
> Great imagery, I know. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, as you can obviously tell.
> 
> WELL ANYWAY. With college starting up for me around the 20th, I’ll do my best to update whenever I can, but I make no promises about timeliness. @@ I’m definitely gonna keep working at this story, though. That you can be sure of.


	12. Bunny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fionna accidentally discovers herself and Marshall is less of an asswipe than usual except for when he's not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi guys. I'm still shit.

I sat in my room, staring into my lap as I waited for tiredness to wash over me. I felt a lot more relaxed after my walk with Infernus, about everything, but the soreness in my body and ease in my mind wasn’t enough to battle my insomnia. Groaning, I rolled over onto my side and ended up falling off of the bed, face-first. I stayed there for a while, feeling disappointed in myself and hoping that I didn’t break my nose because that just sounded like something I would do. I sat up and crossed my legs in front of me, shouting and almost falling over again when I saw a screw driven firmly into my knee.

“Where the _fuck_ did this come from!?” I yelled grasping my knee and trying to decide what to do with myself. I hadn’t even felt it. I didn’t even know where it came from. I grabbed it by the head and steeled myself, squeezing my eyes shut before ripping it out.

“Is everything alright?” Marshall asked, opening the door as I peeked through one eye to see the damage.

“I…” No. Everything was _not_ alright.

There was no trace of it.

No blood, no hole, not a mark on my skin to imply that the screw had ever been there.

“…fell on a screw,” I finished, holding the short, black piece of metal.

“Did you, now?” Marshall said, walking over and crouching down next to me to inspect the damage that wasn’t there.

“It didn’t hurt me…” I said, staring at it, twisting it around in my hands as if it were magical or something and by holding it a certain way it would reveal to me its dark secrets.

“Well I doubt it could even if you wanted it to,” Marshall said, taking the screw from me and standing to throw it into a trashcan in the corner.

“What do you mean?” I asked, watching him through narrow eyes as though the magical screw might bounce back out and attack.

“You’re what some might call… immortal in this realm,” he explained.

“ _Immortal_?”

“Well, only partially. Magic will still hurt you. And I’d say you’d still die of old age, but as our pact-maker your body’s clock has been put on hold. So more like seventy percent immortal,” he qualified

“ _Seventy percent immortal_?”

“Yes, that is, indeed, what I said.”

“As in _seven tenths_ immortal _._ ”

“Exactly that. You should be a math teacher.” He gave me a smile so sweetly sarcastic I felt cavities forming.

“Well I was planning on teaching elementary school after I graduated but _that’s beside the point_.” I stood and repositioned myself on the bed to where I was before I fell.

“What’s the point we’re trying to get at, here, then?” He joined me, sitting on the end of the bed and leaning over his knees.

“ _How?_ ”

He smirked. “Ah, unfortunate humans with their unfortunate lack of common knowledge.”

“Yeah, yeah, humans suck, we get it. Care to enlighten me, o King of Condescension?” I crossed my arms over my chest and he chuckled. Bitch.

“Well, since you asked nicely,” he said, winking like a cheap prostitute. “Humans survive off of something we educated beings like to call _naets anergie_ , which pretty much translates to nature or natural energy. It’s the kind of energy that, in any other dimension, you’ll find radiating freely off of just about everywhere. Midnaught, in particular, has an abundance of the stuff. _Everything_ from any other dimension just exudes the stuff like body heat. It’s pretty much completely useless to anyone except humans. Humans evolved so that _naets_ is not only useful, but it’s their only food source. And, I mean, what else would you need when this shit is everywhere, right?

“Problems is, every other living thing in your realm developed the same adaptation—keep in mind this is all billions of years ago when life was first developing on your planet, common ancestry, back when everything was single-celled organisms; we have it all on tape. It’s really quite charming. Anyway, this led to a population boom of all these tiny little microbes all over everywhere, which inevitably led to a shortage, and so, all of the little microbes started eating each other. Bang, survival of the fittest, mutation, adaptation, law conservation of energy, all that fancy sciency stuff. Point is, you and your cute little rock called Earth are special snowflakes that feed off of the one thing that you don’t have, which happens to be everywhere here. And since it’s just in the air, you straight up absorb it, no eating, breathing, or other effort required.”

“So… that makes me immortal how…?”

“There’s a surplus here. Your body is, like, god-moding it right now. Any physical damage done to you is auto-healed. I could put your hand in a blender and it would come out in one piece,” Marshall said, examining his nails thoughtlessly as though this were just some totally normal, forgettable everyday conversation.

“That’s… really unsettling to think about,” I said.

“What, the immortality or the thought of your hand in a blender?” He didn’t even glance up.

“Can both be the answer?” I sighed. It suddenly made a lot more sense that Marshall chose a human as the pact holder, and a lot less sense that Infernus and Kaugomme were so bent out of shape about it.

Marshall smirked and rolled his eyes. “It’s great for you, since it means I can’t bite you anymore without using magic or something to break the skin. Which, in turn, really sucks for me.”

I raised an eyebrow at him then looked down at my hands. I clenched them hard, digging my nails into my palms, then released. Not even a print in my skin.

“Huh…” I mumbled. I stood and lumbered over to the trashcan where Marshall had thrown the screw away earlier, digging out the little piece of metal. I brought my hand up then stabbed myself in the thigh, barely flinching at the impact. “Whoa…” I whispered.

I skipped back over to the bed, now excited by my newfound physical indestructability, and snatched up Marshall’s hand. I felt the edges of his demon nails, sharp as knives like always, then raked one down my arm, almost laughing when it tickled more than anything.

“Having fun?” he asked.

I ignored him, grabbed him by his face and forced his mouth open, shoving my thumb up onto one of his teeth and pulling it back in awe.

“Satisfied yet?”

I stared into his ruby red eyes, beaming. “This is _incredible_ ,” I said.

“Isn’t it, though?” Marshall said, almost mirroring my expression. “Just don’t go jumping off any cliffs. You _can_ break your back that way and it’ll be the most uncomfortable ten seconds of your puny life.”

I thumped him on the forehead and backed away. “Yeah, whatever. You spoil all of my fun.”

“ _All_ of your fun, huh?” he said, getting that devilish gleam in his eye that meant that he wanted something. “Are you sure I spoil _all_ of the fun, Fionna?” he asked, getting all up in my face space like he was going to kiss me or something. Oh. He did. That’s actually exactly what he was doing. He was kissing me. That would be Marshall’s lips. Attached to my lips. Kissing them. As my lips were kissing back, fortunately enough.

God, I love kissing.

Such a useful action, kissing. Partner feeling upset about something? Just make out. Got an extra ten minutes to kill? Make out. Bored? Make out. Undeniably horny? Make out. Ravenous demon lord trying to take the edge off of his mighty hunger? You got it. Just make out.

We parted to breathe for a moment while I tried to register how I’d ended up laying back on the bed with Marshall straddling me.

“You know, with the whole superhuman immortality business you’ve got going for you now, I’ve thought up the perfect nickname for you,” Marshall breathed, his lips finding where my neck and jaw met and kissing me hungrily.

“Oh, god, what is it?” I said.

“You’re gonna hate me for it. Are you ready?” he said into my neck.

“Just get it over with,” I insisted.

“Energizer Bunny.”

“ _You are kidding me._ ” I said pushing his face away from me as I tried to give him the most incredulous stare I could muster.

“What. I thought it was clever,” he said, shit-eating grin plastered to his face.

“You did fucking not.”

“I think it’s pretty cute, myself. Very fitting with your stamina.”

I buried my face in my hands and groaned. “You actual piece of shit. You stale toothpick. You unremarkable lampshade. You cumbersome fruit salad. You mediocre stopwatch. You unimpressive peacock. You distasteful fucknugget. Are you actually, literally, seriously kidding me right now.” I tried to hold back the smile but I couldn’t. Ridiculous.

“You’re smiling. You like it.”

“No I don’t,” I said, still smiling because fuck my life.

“Energizer.”

“If Bonnie or Marcie catch wind of this in any, _any_ way, I will set you on fire.”

“Bunny.”

I rolled onto my side and hid my face under my arms, groaning. Marshall laughed and rolled off of me, crossing his arms behind his head, million-dollar grin as wide as ever, as pleased with himself as a toddler that managed to take a piss by themselves for the first time.

I stayed curled up for another minute or two until I felt the embarrassment and nonsense of the moment fade out and stared into the ceiling.

“How are you doing?” Marshall asked suddenly.

I chanced a glance his way and found him lost in the patterns of the stone above. “Infernus tip you off or something?” I replied offhandedly.

He shrugged. “Maybe he did. Maybe I just feel like not being an asshole for once. Who knows?”

“What do you care?” I waited for a response when there was one. I sighed and sat up, turning my body away from his slightly. “Better,” I said.

“Better than what?”

“Why don’t you find out yourself,” I said, sharper than I’d intended. I stared at him, wide-eyed.

He glared pointedly back at me. “It’s quiet right now.”

I stared back into my lap. Okay so maybe he actually _was_ trying to not be an asshole. For once. “It’s better… than how it was before.”

“Well that was incredibly informative, Fionna, thank you for the explanation.” I felt him sit up behind me, urging me to continue in irritated silence.

"It isn't as scary as it was at first,” I started, pausing for another minute before I continued. “And I think I know why, now, actually.” I gave myself another moment to form the words. “I've started to realize that... everything is connected here. Like… gosh how do I explain it? I haven’t really thought about it a lot before, and really I’m just processing out loud here but… Like, we're entire dimensions away, but I still feel some sort of attachment to home, and to all of the people that I've seen and met, here, you know? And I… and I think that they can feel it, too. The connection. It’s there for everybody. And I just get this feeling somewhere, somehow, that everything's going to be okay.” I closed my eyes, twisting the ring on my thumb, using it as my crutch. “And I feel like it's not just me telling myself that. It’s not. It's something bigger. Something bigger than all of us that keeps us all together, and it just knows, because it’s this big connection of everything to everything, and it knows and it's telling me that I'm going to be okay."

I snapped myself out of my thoughts and found Marshall staring at me almost starry-eyed for a moment. "What?" I said.

"Sorry," he said, blinking the expression away, wincing the smallest bit as he realized his composure had faltered. "It's—you just reminded me of someone I knew once,” he said, recuperating.

"Oh," I said. I started to ask who, but I stopped myself.

"You wouldn't know him," he answered without my asking.

"Of course not," I said.

"He died, actually. A long time ago."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear it."

"It's been a thousand years, now, I'm sure."

"He must have been very close to you for you to remember him for so long," I said, closing my eyes and fiddling with the ring on my thumb.

Marshall flashed me a half-smile. "Closer than I've been to anyone before."

I felt some sort of emotion flare up in my chest at the thought, but quickly smothered it, whatever it was.

Marshall caught onto me, however, blatantly smirking at that point. "Was that a flicker of envy I felt?"

"No!" was my immediate answer. "Maybe..." I allowed. "I don't know. I guess I was just—hey, I thought you said it was quiet."

“Doesn’t mean I don’t have empathy.” Marshall's expression softened for a moment before he shook his head and let out a chuckle, holding his head in his hands. "You and your human emotions, making me go all sentimental for a second, there."

He looked back up at me and it was like he'd put a mask on over his face. It was shocking, for a moment. But I realized that this was the normal Marshall: the proud, strong, cocky Marshall, the one that I saw day in, day out, the Marshall that was so believably sincere that everyone—I was sure that even _he_ —was convinced that the mask was genuine.

But only then did I see the seams, the loose stitches and threadbare fabric that hid the _real_ , that glimpse of authenticity that he kept so well concealed underneath layers of _fake_. The Marshall that had a past, a history, a backstory that was more than just live die repeat. I could never unsee it, and the mask knew that it had messed up, knew where its faults were and would patch them up immediately so I would never be able to reach under them again.

A fact that only made me want to try harder.

He was a puzzle that I could solve, now, a problem that I could figure out. And I _would_ figure him out.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

“Fionna! I think it’s high time we teach you how to fight.”

I looked at Infernus like he was moderately crazy. His expression was serious with a touch of humor in his eyes at my lack of a solid response. I looked down at myself and looked back up at him.

“Have you even seen me?” I said incredulously. “You think _this_ body is capable of fighting off _other_ bodies? Other bodies with actual _mass_? You must be joking.”

“Of course not,” Kaugomme scoffed. “We don’t expect you to fight to _win_. You just have to be able to survive long enough for someone else to come and save your sorry ass so we don’t all d—” He stopped himself so suddenly I almost fell over.

“So we don’t all what?” I said.

Kaugomme casted a worried glance over at Marshall, who returned the gaze with annoyance. “So we don’t all _die_ ,” Marshall finished. “It’s another perk of the pact. If you’re killed, we’ll all lose a tremendous amount of energy, all at the same time, which could cause us to fumble, pass out, get the shit beaten out of us, just die straight away, et cetera, et cetera. And not one of those fun little deaths where you just die and come back the next day all fine and dandy. It usually takes… a few centuries or so to recover, which would make for a great inconvenience to our mission.”

“Not to mention _incredibly_ boring,” Kaugomme added.

Marshall frowned. “Five years is bad enough. Try five-hundred.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Wow,” I said, grimacing with Marshall. “Shit. No fucking pressure or anything, guys. Okay. Thanks for _totally not letting me know until now_.” I squeezed my eyes closed and rubbed my forehead with my palms. I knew there had to be another catch somewhere. It all seemed too easy, before. “Jesus, why did I ever let you guys make me into the pact holder.”

Kaugomme shrugged. “It’s not like you had any choice in the matter.”

“For some reason, I don’t find that remotely comforting in the slightest,” I groaned.

I chanced a glance up at Infernus, who looked genuinely sorry for me for a moment before he tore his eyes away and stared at the ground.

I sighed, accepting defeat. “I guess we’d better get started, then. Can’t have us all dying on Bonnie and Marcie simultaneously.”

Marshall clapped a hand on my back. “That’s the spirit, _bunny_ ,” he said.

“You shut your whore mouth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as you know, I’m in college now, lots of work, not a lot of time. Updates will probably continue to be infrequent, but I assure you I’m not dropping this story anytime soon. Thank you for reading, and please tell me what you think!!


	13. The Devil's Ears are Sharp as Knives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Characters are developed and Kaugomme may actually have a reason for being such a little bitch

“What, are you the descendant of an octopus or something? What are you even doing with your hands?” Infernus scoffed.

I huffed and threw my arms down to my sides for the third time that afternoon. “I don’t _know._ You didn’t _show me_ what to _do_ with them,” I said, raking a hand through my hair, which probably should have been tied back for what we were doing but I didn’t have any goddamn hair ties.

Of all the things that Marshall could have forgotten to pack when he spirited me away, it just _had_ to be the fucking hair ties. I was about ready to cut my hair off but when I’d suggested that Marshall shot it down so fast I nearly got whiplash. Of course, his reason being that I couldn’t physically cut my hair in my state of immortality without the use of magic and “ _Seriously, Fionna, I am not going to look up a goddamn spell to cut your goddamn hair, that would literally cost me an arm and a leg, and they will have fucking hair ties in the next goddamn city, I think you can last a day or two of training before then_.”

Stupid fucking Marshall and his stupid fucking logic.

“All right, Fireball, obviously your approach of barking commands at her until she figures out whatever it is you want her to do isn’t working,” Kaugomme said from behind me. I turned to see him scowling, hands in his pockets and weight shifted onto one leg. “Why don’t you go break with Abadeer, Juliette and Juliette over there while I work with the little miss here.” He looked my way and smirked. “Something tells me she’s more of the ‘learn by doing’ type, anyway.”

Infernus sighed and agreed, walking back to where Marshall, Bonnie and Marcie were standing in a circle, doing whatever it was they were doing.

I heaved another sigh, holding onto the back of my neck in discomfort. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said. “I told you I’m just not cut out for fighting, or defense or whatever you call it.”

“ _Surviving_ ,” Kaugomme said with a pointed stare.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that.” I scowled. “I’m just not a fighter. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you were more of a ‘learn by doing’ type. I’m a doer myself. You can learn. Trust me. Someone just has to show you.”

I was a bit taken aback by the way he seemed to be taking me seriously for once, so I just nodded and waited to see what he had in mind.

He glanced me over, eyes lingering knowingly over the ring on my thumb I had taken to fiddling with. “Take it off,” he said. “It’ll fog up your head.”

I nodded, sliding the ring off of my finger and tucking it into my pocket, breath hitching at the sudden wave of information, clarity and uneasiness that came with its removal.

We stood and stared at each other for a long time, Kaugomme studying me with violet eyes like I was some sort of equation to be solved or a list to be memorized. Every time he glanced toward my face, I returned the stare steadily, trying to match his intensity.

“We’ll start with defending from physical attacks,” Kaugomme began, so suddenly I nearly flinched when he broke the silence. “Most of what you’ll be doing is dodging, but we’ll start with physical defense tactics before I make you jump around too much. Now for your basic defense stance, you’ll want to hold yourself like this.”

I watched as Kaugomme began to do what appeared to be some sort of sign language at me. I didn’t even notice my limbs moving at first, until I saw my arm come up in front of my face and I realized that my legs were slightly more spread apart, my right arm held out in front of my neck and my left in front of my torso, hands clenched loosely into fists.

Kaugomme held a hand in front of me lazily and I vaguely recognized the rune for “stop” tattooed on his palm. “I’m gonna let go now,” he warned, “so don’t fall on your face or anything stupid like that.”

He closed his palm and my body felt like my own again. I almost stumbled a bit, not quite sure how the stance would feel at first, but when I held the pose it already felt natural and learned. I beamed up at him, eyes wide.

“That was _so_ cool. Was that some sort of rune sign language you were doing with your hands? That has to be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” I said, still holding my position lest he tried to make any sudden moves. Of course, I was sure he could have beaten my ass in the blink of an eye if he wanted to, but I trusted that we were beyond that point in our relationship.

“Well, yes, I was born deaf so I had to learn the Rune Sign Language for my form of magic to be anything remotely useful,” he explained. “‘Deaf kid speech’ and spellcasting don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.”

Wait, backtrack. Did he just say “born deaf”? I didn’t understand. Weren’t Son’s not supposed to be inhibited in any way? Did that count as an inhibition? “But I thought that… being born a Son that—”

“That a Son of Lucifer can’t be handicapped? Well, whoop-dee-fuckin-doo, look at you! Wrong again!” His voice was scathing and I found myself flinching back.

I frowned. “That’s not how I meant it.” I never would have guessed had he not told me. Something must have happened before we met.

He sighed. “Yeah. Whatever. It’s in the past. Now I’m _cured_ , a fully functioning, picture of perfection Son of the Great Demon Lord. The past isn’t important.”

“‘Cured’?” I said, voice rising so high it almost came out as a whisper. “What do you mean by ‘ _cured’_? The past isn’t important?!”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, and you don’t want to listen. Let’s just get on with this obnoxious training business. Stand straight. I’m going to charge forward, and you’re going to block me.”

I puffed some sort of reluctant affirmation and relaxed my position.

Kaugomme stared into my eyes intensely for a long time. It gave me a moment to cool down and focus, which I guess I sort of appreciated. He lunged. I reacted, jumping back and holding up my guarding position. When he collided with me, instead of falling back, my feet held firmly to the ground, skidding back and leaving trails in the dirt. He held onto my wrists a moment longer before he stepped back and grinned wide, like an artist proud of his work.

“Shit,” I said, straightening up. “Okay, I see how you’re a great teacher and all, but there’s no way that was all just me. What the hell did you do just now?”

“That,” he said, copying the pose he’d just taught me, “was the sign for ‘rock’. Use that sign and you’ll be mostly immobile for a few seconds.” He motioned my hands back into position. “Then if you slide your fists together like this…” I watched as he shifted my fists so that they sat on top of each other, “it becomes ‘statue,’ and you’ll be completely immobile for about a minute or two. It takes a lot more energy, however.”

I nodded, suddenly feeling a little dizzy. “Whoa…” Something caught my attention at the corner of my vision and I felt myself sway.

“What, ready for a break alread—Fionna!”

I was going to take a moment sit down but the ground had already come up to meet me.

I couldn’t see anything beyond my own eyes. Flashes of a world that I didn’t know thundered through my head too fast, overloading my senses: A forest, flooded in endless, sickly green. A child’s hands grasping at what could not be seen. Broken screaming. Broken sobbing. A young man holding a younger boy’s hand. Flaming golden hair and bright amber eyes. A grown man’s hands, now tattooed but still empty. Red. A flash of dark hair and a smile.

And suddenly something vivid.

Hands grasping my head and a forehead touched to mine. “I can change you,” a voice said from nowhere, but still ringing loudly in my mind. “If you want it. I can give it to you. All you have to do is ask.”

His face is so close I can feel his breath on my cheeks. An indescribable feeling of want and sadness fills my chest.

“I want it, Marshall,” I reply without saying a word. “I want to know what it’s like.” I gaze into deep red eyes, looking desperately for what I know is not there.

“It’ll hurt you. A lot. It’ll even hurt me, too, I think. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” But that’s a lie, isn’t it? “I’ve never been more sure in my life.” I don’t want this. Please don’t make me want this.

“I’m sorry.” A kiss, soft and chaste and nothing to counteract the sudden _pain_ —

“ _Fionna_.” A strong voice and a firm grip on my hand. I felt a ring around my thumb and a fog in my head. I looked up into deep violet eyes and slowly blinked a face into focus.

“Kaugomme?”

“Oh good you’re awake. For God’s sake you have _got_ to stop prying,” he said, exasperated.

“Sorry,” I replied groggily. “Din’t mean to.”

His expression softened. He smirked but there was no humor behind it. “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said. “Having to share some of Abadeer’s cognizance doesn’t sound like my idea of a walk in the park. We’re lucky the others didn’t notice, or we’d have a whole other level of shitstorm on our hands.”

I nodded, slowly leaning up onto my elbows, noticing they didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected them to. “How long was I out?” I asked.

“Just as long as it took me to dig the ring out of your pocket and shove it onto your thumb. Barely time to get your arms scratched up, though the blood on your wrists will probably make it obvious what happened whenever we _do_ regroup,” he said.

I grimaced. “Felt like longer.”

“Who knows? Maybe all that practice has made you into something of a voyeurism expert now.”

I pulled my most irritated and unimpressed glare. “Ha. Funny.” How did he even _know_ about the other times?

Kaugomme stood up from his crouch and offered me a hand. “Well, come on, now. Bloodied or not, we still have training to do; the day is still young.”

“Right,” I said, nodding and took his hand, pulling myself up and shaking off the dizziness.

“Hey, Kaugomme?” I started, stopping him as he was turning away. “I just have one question to ask.” _It’s not really my place to be asking questions like this. I shouldn’t ask it. I should stop now. Just say “never mind,”_ I thought. I kept going. “Were you and Marshall…”

He stiffened, shoulders totally straight and rigid, hands clenched and knuckles white. His sudden change made me trail off.

“Anything you want to know about Abadeer and me, you can ask him,” he responded coldly. “I think you’ve already heard _more_ than enough from me.” He turned around and started to walk away. “Now come on… You can keep the ring.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

It was late. I wasn’t sure why I was still up. We’d found a small town that served as a halfway point between the Southwest Checkpoint and the next major city (they didn’t have any hair bands and I made sure to give Marshall a lot of hell about it) and managed to snag a couple of rooms for the night. Marshall and company _assured_ us that we wouldn’t have to do so much travel on foot as soon as we could get a bit deeper into Midnaught, but it didn’t change the fact that my legs were cramping and my back hurt from all of the lunging and dodging I’d put myself through that day. Being seventy percent immortal didn’t seem to change the effects of over-exertion.

Which was why it didn’t make sense that I was outside, staring into the broken darkness of Midnaught and practicing over and over again the signs that Kaugomme had taught me that day. His magic was surprisingly combat-friendly, and I couldn’t imagine using it without the Rune Sign Language. I found myself thankful, and almost guiltily so, that Kaugomme was born deaf.

After “rock” he’d taught me the sign for “flutter” which gave me a few seconds of near weightlessness so I could dodge enemies quicker and easier. The extension of that sign was “fly” which, like “statue,” took a lot more energy, but enhanced the effects of “flutter” and allowed me to float for a short period of time. He was going to show me a few more signs, like “quick” and “push,” but it was already getting late and I was getting tired, so instead the group had set a moderate pace toward the next town, nestled comfortably in the distance.

“Can’t sleep?” I heard someone say from behind me, making me jump despite my “statue” stance. Or maybe I just thought I’d jumped. I couldn’t be sure. I recognized the voice as Marshall, however, and let myself relax.

“Something like that,” I said. I slowly relaxed my arms, letting the magic dissipate on its own before turning to face him. Kaugomme, or just Gomme as he preferred to be called as apparently the extra syllable was _such_ a mouthful, informed me earlier that day that trying to fight a spell cast on the self can be extremely painful and sometimes result in severe injuries; I had no desire to experiment with the effects, myself.

“Looks like you learned a lot of useful things today. Gomme is a great teacher,” Marshall said, offering a half-hearted grin. Because of the large amount of magic that Gomme’d had me manipulate that day, nobody asked about the scars, now scabbing and peeling away, that marred my forearms. Gomme and I were the only ones that knew about how I’d let my mind magic get out of hand, as far as we knew, and we both agreed it was probably best to keep it that way.

“Yeah, he taught me a lot of signs that work really well for defense,” I said.

It was sudden. I, wasn’t sure where the desire originated, but I found myself wanting to test how much he knew about what had happened earlier that day, just how “silent” it really was in his head. And then, even more, I wanted to test how much he would lie about what he knew.

“You know he was born deaf,” I started, nonchalantly. “I don’t know how long ago you met him or anything, but I was just thinking that it was really interesting. He was born deaf and now he can hear and speak and everything. It’s almost miraculous, don’t you think?”

I saw him tense, and the mask pulled tighter. Another seam. Another loose stitch. “Yeah, it is. Actually,” he said, voice level, relaxed. “I remember him telling me about that at some point. Being born deaf. He grew up with a whole different way of thinking. It was quite fascinating.” First lie.

“I wonder who did it, you know. Who _changed_ him?” With that word, _changed_ , I knew he knew. Even if he didn’t know before, that was his cue. He was smart. He knew. “They must have been a remarkable talent to do something as drastic as give hearing to the deaf.”

He visibly flinched that time. “It’s hard to say,” he said, still playing along. He knew _I_ knew that he knew. But he wouldn’t let it show. “A spell of that caliber could easily kill a man. Surely whoever did it isn’t around anymore.” Another lie… right?

“What are you two doing out here?” Gomme called from a few meters away. Both of us jumped at the noise and turned to see him standing with his arms crossed, trademark grimace on his face.

“I could ask you the same thing, Kaugomme,” Marshall replied, an easy smirk pulling at his lips.

“Your bed was empty,” Gomme explained. “I was worried you might be up to no good. Should’ve figured you two were just fucking around.”

Marshall held his palms open and his grin widened. “Guilty as charged; you caught us.” He let his hands fall to his sides “Fionna and I were just discussing todays training. I have to say I’m quite impressed. You’re quite the competent teacher.” His eyelids fell halfway but his eyes brightened significantly. “There’s just one thing you should have paid a little more attention to.”

I didn’t like where this was headed.

Gomme’s eyes narrowed and his face morphed into a glower. “Oh? And what could that have been?”

Marshall’s face fell and the resulting glare could burn a hole through steel. “ _Discretion_.”

I half expected Gomme to lunge for him, go for his neck and bite straight through his throat. But he didn’t. Nobody moved for a long time, until Marshall made a show of yawning and stretching. “Well, this has been fun,” he said, lumbering back toward the town in Gomme’s direction. “I’ll see you two tomorrow, bright and early.” He passed by Gomme close, too close, shoulders bumping just barely, and I held my breath until he was out of sight.

Never before in my life had I _ever_ seen anything as purely, wholly hostile as that.

Gomme had his fists clenched tight and I almost swore I saw him shaking.

“Kaugomme…” I started.

He released his hands and let out a hard breath. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, voice gravely and low. “It’s not your problem.”

Then he turned around and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa. Did ANY of you see ANY of that coming, because I sure as hell didn’t. Wow wow wow BACKSTORY much. Damn I just started liking Kaugomme about 600 percent more because before he was an uptight asshole but now he’s an uptight asshole with HISTORY.
> 
> DANG okay that was fun. I know this update was fast but don’t get used to it. Just cherish my fleeting moments of inspiration.


	14. Shoko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fionna remembers that Bonnie and Marcie exist. Feelings are had. Questions are answered, but only like two so it’s not actually all that satisfying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DID SOMEBODY SAY DIALOGUE??!!???!!1!1??  
> NO??  
> OH.  
> WELL.  
> THAT'S JUST TOO DAMN BAD.  
> CUZ GUESS WHAT THIS IS.  
> JUST KIDDING YOU DON'T HAVE TO GUESS.  
> IT'S DIALOGUE.  
> WOW.

I didn’t follow either of them. Instead I went back to the room that I was sharing with Bonnie and Marcie. I didn’t expect either of them to be up when I returned, but I was surprised to find both of them awake, sitting next to each other on Bonnie’s bed.

Marcie sat up when she saw me. “Fionna,” she said. “Where’ve you been? We were getting worried about you.”

“Oh,” I said, forcing my mouth closed. “Sorry. My walk got a little long, I guess.”

Marcie smiled, patting the spot in front of her on the bed. “C’mere. Come talk to us.” I complied, slipping my shoes off at the door and sitting on the bed in front of her feet. “It’s been a rough week, huh?”

I smiled insincerely. “Talk about the understatement of the year,” I said.

Marcie frowned, moving to sit on her knees and hold a hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “look at me.”

I did.

“We may not know any more about what’s going on than you do—hell we have _less_ of an idea than you do by now—but we’re still here.” Her grip on my shoulder tightened. “We’re _here_ for you, Fi. We may not be what you thought we were a little while ago, and I’m sorry that we had to lie to you for so long, but we’re still _here_ _now_ , and we’re _here_ to help you get through this.” She pulled me into a tight hug. “Hey. Shh, don’t cry. Everything’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to cry now.”

I hadn’t even noticed I was crying, but I hugged her back tightly and let myself cry into her shoulder. Bonnie jumped in after a moment and they let me turn into a sobbing mess in their arms.

After a while I calmed down, sniffling. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sorry? What for?” Marcie asked.

“Sorry I’ve been so distant,” I said, feeling my eyes begin to burn again. “I didn’t mean to cut you out like that.”

“No, Fi, babe. It’s not your fault you got pulled into this,” Marcie insisted. “It’s okay. I just wanted to remind you that you’re not alone.” Bonnie nodded, burying her cheek on top of my head.

“I know. I know that. Thank you,” I said.

Bonnie and Marcie pulled away, smiling at me. I could see that Marcie had started crying sometime during our embrace as well, and Bonnie had a dark look in her eyes.

“Bonnie, is everything alright?” I asked.

She looked up like I’d pulled her out of deep thought. “Oh, yes. I’m fine. It’s just… funny.”

“What is?” I pressed.

“I…” Bonnie trailed off, glancing down into her lap before chancing a look at Marcie. “Babe, do you remember that old friend that I used to have way back when I was really young, before I met you?”

“I think I know who you mean,” Marcie said. “What was her name? Something-ko?”

“Shoko,” Bonnie said. “Yeah, her. I don’t really know why, but I was reminded of her recently. It was just a little flash of thought, but after that I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”

“You said a friend you used to have,” I started. “Did you have a falling out? Did she pass away or something?”

“Yeah, she…” Bonnie trailed off for a moment, almost like she’d lost the ability to speak. “She disappeared.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me about her.”

“Well we met when I was really young, about forty human years or so, and she was about two-hundred years older than me,” she began. “She was a witch, with very powerful magic for… I want to say it was sympathy magic or something like that? She was born a nomad, so she was just passing through the dimensions when we met. She was very pretty, long black hair like Marcie, but she was missing an arm.” Bonnie smiled to herself. “She always used to say she didn’t feel like it was gone, because she always felt the bodies and presence of everyone around her. She could be a head in a jar and she said she’d feel the same.” Her expression darkened and a frown creased her brow. “We were very close for a time. She would travel, but she would always come back to visit me. She was one of my first close friends.

“But then one day she changed. She got very cold and distant, didn’t look at me, wouldn’t touch me. She said, ‘I’m going away again soon, but this time I won’t be coming back.’ It was very sudden. And I asked her what she was doing and why she was leaving. And she said, ‘I got a job.’ And when I reached out to give her a hug goodbye, she wouldn’t let me touch her. And for a second she looked angry. She was angry. But she turned away from me and held her shoulder like she did when she was upset. And she cast a spell and she left.

“I didn’t see her, after that. She was right. She didn’t come back. I waited for her for a long time, too.” Bonnie smiled but there was no joy in it. “I know I’ve told you this before, Marcie, but when I first saw you after your fall, with your hair, I thought that you were her.” Her expression warmed up a little when Marcie met her gaze. “Ever since, I hadn’t really thought about her much. There was no need. She… Shoko… She was long gone by then anyway. I knew that. I had to know that by then. I just needed a little push, so I could accept it.”

“Oh, Bonnie,” Marcie said, pulling her into a hug.

“Sorry I brought up so many dark memories, asking you about her and all,” I apologized.

“No, Fi, it’s okay. I’m way past it now. Plus, it’s healthy to reminisce about the past every now and again. It’s better than pretending that it never happened,” Bonnie said.

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for sharing.”

“My god, Fifi, you look like you’re about to pass out just sitting there,” Marcie remarked, bending down to look up at my face. “Are those bags under your eyes? I thought humans were supposed to _absorb_ life energy! You must be crazy tired. Come on, go to bed!”

“Yeah, bed sounds like a good idea.” I paused. “Thanks, you two, for cheering me up. I really appreciate that you’re here.”

Marcie’s expression softened as she shooed me off the bed. “Of course we are. Now get some sleep! We’ll be right here in the morning, and by your side everywhere else along the way, too.”

I nodded, heading for my own bed for some very much needed rest.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

The next day we spent travelling. Marshall was impatient to get to the next city where supposedly we could catch train to one of Midnaught’s seven inner cities. Pride was known to dwell in the depths of the Seventh City, the innermost city and, not coincidentally, the hardest one to get into. Station Two, the town that we were headed for, had a train that went directly into First City.

According to Marshall, the Seven Cities were set up essentially like rings around one another, First City as the outermost ring and Seventh City the innermost; Infernus liked to refer to them as the Seven Levels of Hell. First City was by far the largest and most easily accessible, as it was the trade center of the realm. People from all dimensions gathered in a marketplace metropolis. One could buy almost anything imaginable and then some. Unsurprisingly, Greed had a strong hold over the city’s commerce, as well as the organization of Second City and Sixth City, the business and political districts respectively. Third City, Fourth City, and Fifth City tended to meld into each other and had no distinct draws of their own, though Fifth City supposedly had a knack for magic that I thought sounded interesting. And Seventh City, of course, was Pride’s domain. It was commonly, and rather stereotypically, referred to as “The City of Eternal Night” because it was totally encased in steel and magic. Only someone with very special permissions could even _think_ about entering Seventh City. Marshall stopped talking after that, though, and I wasn’t sure if it was because we’d arrived at Station Two or if it was that he didn’t have a plan to explain beyond what he’d told me.

The woman at the station’s front desk smiled brightly when we approached. Marshall got us spots on the next outbound train. We were invited to stay at the connected inn until our departure early the next morning, and Marshall paid with a small stack of bills that I didn’t even know he was carrying. I didn’t know the currency of Midnaught, but train tickets did not appear to be cheap.

I was relieved to have my own room, flopping down face first onto the bed the moment I saw it. Privacy was hard to come by on an interdimensional adventure with four people and a mind reader, so I gladly took any alone time that I could get.

I thought about sleeping but I just ended up thinking for a while, and a couple of questions occurred to me. First, how the hell did Marshall have so much money, and second, what was the deal with this plan that nobody seemed to know? Of course, those were just two of many, many more unanswered questions that constantly bounced around in my head, but they seemed to stick out the most in terms of relevancy at that moment. The evening was still young so I figured I may as well try and pine some answers out of somebody. Neither Gomme nor Marshall seemed to be in a particularly good mood after the previous night’s encounter—another unanswered question I’d yet to ask about—so it seemed Infernus was my best bet if I wanted to get answers.

I barely registered knocking on Infernus’s door until after I’d already done it. I stared, dazed for a moment, at his face before coming back to my senses and asking to come in.

“Sure. Is something on your mind?” he said, standing aside to let me through. He’d taken off the long jacket that he usually wore and I was almost surprised to see that he had arms underneath the sleeves and not empty voids holding up floating hands.

I shook my head to focus on the task at hand. “Sorry, yeah, a little bit,” I said. “Mind if I sit?” I asked, gesturing to the bed seeing that there were no chairs in the room.

He nodded to me, opting to lean against the wall, himself. “What’s up?” he asked. “You seem rather…”

“Spacey, I know.” I frowned and stared at my hands not entirely sure where to start. “There’re a couple of things I’ve been meaning to ask about lately, actually,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I guess I’ll as the easy questions first,” I said with a wry smile. “It’s about Marshall.”

“Now there’s a surprise,” Infernus said, smirking.

“How the hell does he have so much money, anyway?”

He laughed. “I think the answer to your question might be a little more complicated than you want it to be.”

“Well give it to me short and sweet, then.”

“I guess the human saying for it would be that he has his fingers in a lot of pies,” he explained.

I almost laughed. “I think your human sayings are a little outdated,” I said, smiling. “But what do you mean by that? What does he do?”

Infernus sighed, crossing his arms. “A little of this, a little of that. Even I don’t know all of the nitty gritty details. I know he gets a good amount from writing spells, though. Nothing mainstream, but you don’t have to be to rake in the big bucks with that kind of work. Other than that, he manages a lot of things. A real smooth-talking businessman, you know. He’s always got his mind in a hundred different places. Literally.”

“Huh.” I pursed my lips. “I knew that he could write up spells and things but I didn’t know that it was a real talent of his.”

“Yeah. He designed the pacts, made up a language spell, so we can all understand each other, you know.” It suddenly dawned on me that everyone I’d met on this journey had spoken English, and that it was definitely not a coincidence. “The guy’s a genius.”

“It sounds exhausting.”

“Yeah, well, what do you think you’re here for?” Infernus shot me a half-smile that didn’t quite touch his eyes. “The guy’s brain doesn’t stop. It’s like he can’t turn it off.”

“I wonder why that is.”

“Honestly? I think it’s got something to do with his instability, but that only raises the question of why he’s so…”

“Fucked up,” I said. Actually, I thought I might have an idea about where that came from. “He’s said he’s… died seventeen times, yeah?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And you’ve died, was it eight times?”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t guess anything weird started happening with your magic after the first time you ‘died,’” I said.

Infernus’s eyes widened for a moment. “I— _no_ , I… well maybe more recently, yes… actually…”

I silently urged him to continue.

“It was… after one of my more recent ‘waking ups.’ I sometimes found my fingertips prickling, and I would look down and see…” He held his hand up as demonstration. Five tiny flames danced at his fingertips, illuminating a subtle glow in his red-orange irises. He closed his fist and the flames were gone. “And it just happens sometimes, against my control.”

That had to be the link. There was no doubt about it. “That must be it. All of that instability and excess magic must be a reaction to this repeated temporary ‘death.’ Maybe that’s why he seems to need so much extra attention.”

Infernus raised an eyebrow. “Attention? Surely the pact fulfills all of his energy needs, especially now that we’re in Midnaught.” He saw the look on my face and corrected himself. “But I don’t know for sure. This is Marshall’s spell after all. It may work differently for all of us.”

“Maybe…” It was too late, though. The words had already been spoken. Just another confrontation to add to the list, it seemed. “But speaking of the pacts, that brings me to the other question I wanted to ask. Well, less of a question and more of a general inquiry.”

“And that is?”

“What the hell is the plan here? Everyone seems to be dancing around the details of where we’re going and how we’re getting there. I just want something remotely solid to hold on to, if even for a little bit.”

Infernus scoffed. “I’d love to tell you, but I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I mean I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know_? How can you not know! You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

The shift in the atmosphere was physical. Infernus crossed his arms tighter and his eyes grew cloudy, less looking at me and more looking through me.

“Haven’t you?”

“I’m done talking about this.”

“What aren’t you telling me? I know something big happened with your first pact-holder. What happened with the first attempt?”

“I _said_ I’m done talking!” he yelled.

“Why won’t you answer me!”

He looked up at me, jaws clenched and golden eyes shining. “Please leave.”

I stood up and walked to the door, hand on the doorknob. “At least tell me her name,” I whispered, jaw clenched.

_“Her” name?_

I stood there for a moment, waiting, and when he didn’t answer I twisted the doorknob.

“Shoko,” he said suddenly. I looked up and saw him holding his face in his hands. “Her name was Shoko.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay sorry but if you didn’t see that coming at the end there I am hardcore judging you because I’m like 97% certain I couldn’t have made it any more obvious if I wrote it in the sky in rainbow letters.
> 
> I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but I made a tag on tumblr for this story. "#fanfic: bdmgs" I don't actually expect to see anything up there but I track the tag, so, ya know.   
> Also my tumblr is sexythewalkingcatfish.tumblr.com if you wanna drop by and say hi sometime. 
> 
> Doing the best I can with updates, what with college and all. Only two weeks before finals and then Christmas break! Hopefully that helps? Either way I'll do my best! Thanks so much for all of the support and please continue to comment, subscribe, bookmark, whatever it is you guys like doing.   
> Bye for now!


	15. The Devil's Blood is Clean as Dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fionna explodes and Marshall is a dick about it so really nothing new

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow there is sO MUCH PLOT IN THIS CHAPTER. There’s also a fuck-ton of cussing and some drug abuse references, you have been warned.

I somehow woke up at exactly the right time the next morning. I went down to the inn’s lobby just as Bonnie and Marcie were leaving, and we walked down together in companionable silence.

We boarded the train without a problem. With all of the stops it would be three days’ time until we got into First City. In the meantime we were set up in the first class cars toward the front of the train because of course Marshall Abadeer wouldn’t even dream of anything less. We were offered a lovely-looking breakfast upon boarding that all of us refused because eating wasn’t exactly something any of us needed to do. We settled into our respective rooms nicely.

The rooms were rather small, neutral beiges and whites the only colors, as was to be expected on a train. They were, however, quite comfortably economic, with furniture that moved in and out of the walls. I amused myself pressing buttons and making the desk and chair come out and back for about half an hour before I realized what I was doing and, somewhat embarrassedly, moved my attention to bringing out the bed so I could lay down. I hadn’t slept very well the night before, waking up every hour or so, which was likely the reason for my timely arousal earlier that morning.

And then of course the reason _why_ I couldn’t sleep well was because of what Infernus had told me the night before. The news about Shoko’s being the previous pact-holder and Marshall’s unseemly “appetite” piled onto the seven-hundred-million other questions that I had swirling around in my head that all seemed to point back to Marshall not being entirely honest with me.

I decided that I was angry.

As soon as I decided it, I felt my body temperature rise. I clenched my fists and my knuckles went white. I stood up abruptly and tried not to stamp my feet as I walked to Marshall’s room. I entered without knocking because I knew he’d know I was coming for him and saw him sitting in a lounge chair with a book in his hands. I noticed he was wearing glasses and figured that it must have been the one from before, the magical book he was reading before we’d left my dimension.

He glanced up when I came in, not looking particularly happy to see me. Of course I couldn’t blame him

“And to what do I owe the pleasure,” he said, looking back down at his book and barely paying me any mind. He was trying to irritate me even more. I didn’t know why but that was exactly what he was doing and it was working.

“We need to talk,” I said. “No, actually, that’s a lie. _You_ need to talk. Now.”

“Yes, the weather is rather nice today. A shame we’re crammed up in a train for all of it. Beats walking, though,” he said, dismissively.

“Don’t ignore me!”

“You’re right, three days isn’t so bad. And First City is a pretty nice place. It’ll be a good change of scenery. Very lively.”

“I said stop ignoring me! You’ve got some serious explaining to do and I’m not in the mood for one of your stupid little games!”

“Yeah? I’ve always been more into urban culture, myself. I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“Is there any particular reason why you’re being an over-wiped asshole right now or—” It hit me like a ton of bricks. “You fucking _sleaze_!” I could have sworn I saw the corner of his stupid little mouth twitch. “Wow. I was angry before but now I have to say I’m just fucking disappointed.”

It turned into a full-on smirk. “What a shame. Disappointment is such a dull flavor.”

“I can’t believe you. I cannot believe you. Is that what you’ve been doing?! You’ve been using me as a fix! You _just_ used me as a _quick_ _fix_ ,” I yelled, exasperation seeping into my voice. “What the fuck are you even getting out of this?!”

He laughed. He _laughed_.

“You don’t even feel bad!” I screamed. “What, are you too _high_ to feel anything other than smitten with yourself?”

Marshall closed his book, leaning his cheek on his fist and humming in thought. “Hmm… It’s not enough,” he concluded.

“What?”

Suddenly he was standing, crowding me against the wall. “S’not enough,” he repeated, leaning down and kissing me roughly.

“ _What?_ ” I said again, pushing him back. I saw his eyes glow red and for a moment I felt myself falter. “No. _No._ Do _not_ use compulsion on me.”

He ignored me and leaned in again. I let him kiss me again and for a second I kissed him back before I came to my senses. I pushed him away again and slapped him. There was a resounding _smack_ and he stayed completely still as a red mark formed on his cheek.

His irises dulled and slowly he turned back to look at me. For a second it was like this was the first time he’d ever me before. Noticing our position he flinched away, eyes wide, almost horrified. “Fuck,” he said.

“ _Yeah_. In fact. That is _exactly_ the word I would use right now. _Fuck_ you. What the _fuck_ do you think you were _fucking_ doing?” I hissed.

“Oh _shit_ ,” he said, holding his forehead with one hand. He stumbled backwards into his chair and leaned his head backwards, hand still in place. “I fucked up. So bad. I really, really fucked up.”

“You think?!”

“Shit. I don’t have an excuse for this. Wow. Wow I fucked up.” He rubbed his face with both hands and stared at me, eyes still blown wide, mortified. “I owe you an apology.” I wasn’t impressed. “And I know that that’s not what you want from me right now and I really don’t blame you. That was out of line.” I was slightly less unimpressed. “I would tell you to leave, but there’s still something you want to talk about. I’m pretty sure I owe you more than a few explanations.” I was almost not unimpressed. I crossed my arms and frowned at him, but I stayed put.

For a moment I couldn’t tell if he was speaking from behind the mask or not. I decided the thought wasn’t important enough to pursue at the moment.

He was staring at me expectantly. “Oh, so I guess I get to actually _ask_ the questions this time,” I said.

“If we’re being honest right now, I _am_ a little high from that fun little anger episode earlier, so I can’t really read your thoughts correctly anyway. So, the floor is yours.”

I heaved a heavy sigh. “Well. You’re somehow amazingly tolerable when you’re high and not trying to fuck me.”

“It’ll be short-lived, so you’d better take advantage of it while you can,” he said.

“My first question you’ve pretty much just answered for me.”

“Yeah…”

“Okay, I guess… the other thing I really wanted to ask you about was Shoko.”

Marshall’s eyes widened for a moment and he leaned forward onto his knees, huffing loudly. “Okay, actually, let’s talk about anything _but_ that.”

“Why? You said you would answer my questions.”

“Yeah, well, not that one.”

“Why not? You’re acting just like Infernus did.”

“Hah!” Marshall let out a clipped laugh. “Trust me when I say our reasons for reluctance are _completely_ different.”

“Oh yeah?”

" _I’m_ not the dumb fool that fell in love with the pact holder.”

For a moment I hesitated. “He _what_? In love? With Shoko?”

Marshall rolled his eyes. “Like you couldn’t _see_ it.”

“Sorry not everyone was gifted with supernatural perception like you.”

He scoffed. “Hardly. It doesn’t take a mind reader to read body language. You must just be dull.”

I glared at him. “I take back what I said about you being tolerable.” He smirked, eyes still a little hazy. “So then what’s your reason, huh?”

“I told you I’m not talking about it.”

“You literally were just talking about it!” I exclaimed.

“Well I’m not now. Ask something else.”

I groaned loudly into my hands. “You’re insufferable.”

“I’m sorry, were you expecting something else?”

“Okay, how about this? What’s with your need for a fix like this? Don’t tell me it’s some sort of weird addiction you have.”

He chuckled a little bit and rested his cheek on his fist again, gazing up at me through his eyelashes. “You seriously should know the answer to that by now.”

“Well apparently I’m a little dull so how about you enlighten me.”

He pointed a finger at himself and drew circles in the air. “I’m crazy,” he said, like that was just the be-all end-all ultimate explanation of explanations.

“Yeah, I got that much. Mind elaborating on that a little?”

Marshall’s smile widened. “You ever been crazy before? Ever felt like you weren’t in charge of your own body, your own brain, your own thoughts? Has the ringing in your ears ever gotten so loud you could feel every nerve pounding, feel the earth rotating beneath your feet, the blood pulsing just below your skin just _trying_ to get out and it doesn’t even feel like yours?” He bit his lip and his eyelashes fluttered for a moment. I couldn’t tell if he was in pain or if his endorphin-induced brain had just short-circuited from saying so many words in a row like that. “I can’t exactly be on any heavy substances in the middle of a grand scheme like this. But there’s always the temptation to take what I can get. Get away from it all for a second, ya know.” The corner of his mouth twitched again. “Not nearly as fun now that you know that I’m a druggie, though.”

I wasn’t sure if I felt disgust or pity.

“Disgust, probably. I know I would, if I were you.”

“I thought your mind-reading wasn’t working.”

“I told you, it’s short-lived. Plus you think loudly. It’s like you’ve always got an internal narrative running. You’re like a walking book.” I noticed his expression had cleared significantly.

I frowned. “I think I like you better when you’re high.”

“Well there’s an easy way to fix that, you know.”

I glared in response.

“I’m _kidding._ ” I didn’t laugh. “In fact it would probably be for the best if you don’t let me touch you again… ever,” he says, expression hardening. “Self-control hasn’t exactly been one of my strong suits lately, apparently.”

“Never would have guessed,” I said dryly.

“Really, I’m sorry. It’s… it’s gotten worse recently.”

I was a bit taken aback by the seriousness in his tone. For a moment, I thought I could see past the mask again. It was like he’d cut a part of it open, like he was letting me peek past it to the face underneath. I realized that the only way for me to make this mask come off was to make Marshall want to take it off, and for a second that was exactly what I’d done.

“What do you mean recently?” I asked, seeing as his perception of time and mine were more than likely two very different things.

“I’d rather not say.”

“So after Shoko,” I concluded.

He remained silent.

“A shame you won’t tell me what happened,” I sighed.

“Kaugomme will probably tell you. If you ask nicely.”

“I almost want to know your reasoning for not wanting to tell me more than what actually happened,” I admitted.

Marshall gave me a knowing smile and didn’t respond. I sat and waited, but after a while I knew I wouldn’t be getting anything more out of him. With a sigh, I stood and left for my own room without a goodbye, feeling too worn out to go to Kaugomme right away. I figured that could wait until the evening.

As I was settling, I felt a cold chill on the back of my neck that seemed to come out of nowhere. I shivered and turned up the temperature a couple of degrees of some scale that wasn’t Fahrenheit or Celsius and tried to ignore the goose bumps that didn’t seem to go away.

 _He just doesn’t want you to know the truth_ , I heard a voice whisper. I looked around wildly but there was no one around me.

“Who’s there?” I said, voice quivering a little.

 _Because he can’t lie to you_ , it said, sounding farther away.

“Stop it!” I yelled.

The voice was quiet.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

That evening I still wasn’t feeling up to asking Gomme about Shoko, the mystery whispering not helping in the slightest.

It had occurred to me, however, that I should probably tell Bonnie what I knew. She knew Shoko, and perhaps she would have some insight to share. And really, she deserved to know about the fate of her old friend.

I knocked on her door, not surprised when there was no answer. I went to Marcie’s room and knocked, waiting patiently for them to open the door. “It’s Fionna,” I added after a moment.

Bonnie opened the door for me, smiling when she saw me. “Hey, come on in,” she said, moving out of the way and letting me slide past. “Marcie and I were just playing cards. Gomme was nice enough to loan us his deck. God knows why he had a deck of cards on him, but we weren’t about to turn him down.” Marcie was sitting on a bed that took up half the room and appeared to be holding a whole deck of cards in her hands. She didn’t look too happy about it, so I assumed she was losing.

“How nice,” I said, smiling.

“So what is it? Was there something you wanted to tell us? Or are you just here to join in the card games?” Bonnie asked.

“Unfortunately, I’m here with… something to tell you,” I sighed. “It’s about Shoko.”

Bonnie knotted her eyebrows and sat back down on the bed. “About Shoko? I can’t say I follow you. Shoko died decades ago.”

I sighed again. “Yeah, well, that’s kind of what I’m here to tell you about.” I pressed a button on the wall and a lounge chair slid out. I sat down with a knot in my stomach.

“I’m… afraid of what you’re going to say. It couldn’t be that…” Bonnie trailed off, looking into my eyes desperately. I averted my gaze to Marcie, who looked more worried for Bonnie than anything else.

“Yeah. I don’t know any of the details yet, but I found out earlier that… Shoko was, in fact, the previous pact-holder.”

Bonnie’s head fell into her hands. Marcie was holding onto her immediately.

“I know, I’m sorry. I know she was very close to you—”

“Fi, it’s not that!” she said, shaking her head. She looked up at me, eyes already red and puffy. “Jesus, Fi, how could you even think that? She’s dead! She’s been dead! _You’re_ alive! But she… and now _you_ might…”

“No. No, Bonnie, no. It won’t be like that this time,” I said, standing up to wrap my arms around her, too. “Like I said, I don’t know all of the details about it. I just know that it happened. I know it’ll be okay this time. Alright? I promise you.”

“How can you promise that?” she whispered into my shoulder. “How would you know?”

I stroked her hair softly, squeezing her a little tighter. “I just do.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

After everyone calmed down, I stayed in Marcie’s room for a while and played various card games. I lost every one of them, except for our third round of war, but it was still good to be in Bonnie and Marcie’s company. I eventually got tired; I had no concept of time in Midnaught—their clocks worked on an entirely different number system than on Earth, and the days were longer—but I figured it was probably close to their equivalent to midnight by the time I got to bed. The beds were very plush and soft, and I didn’t feel any more chills like earlier, but thoughts about Marshall plagued my mind and kept me from falling asleep.

It had been getting worse, he said. His self-control was slipping. When I thought about it, it seemed like his control had been slipping more and more even since I’d become the pact-holder. Could it have been one of the tolls of the pact? Was he spreading himself too thin? But as pact-holder I was supposed to take away some of the burden. That was what he said, right?

He couldn’t lie to me, she said.

Yes, that had to have been what he said. So it couldn’t have anything to do with the pact. Was it because he was sober? Was it the contact with his brothers? Was he doing something else that I didn’t know about?

After a while, I realized asking myself all of these impossible questions wasn’t helping. So if I couldn’t identify the problem… was there a way that I could fix it?

Surely he’d tried all of the spells in the book, written new ones, mixed potions. Hell, he’d tried to kill himself for good when he realized he couldn’t fix the problem. But there had to be something he hadn’t tried yet. There was no way for him to fix his brain… but maybe he didn’t have to do it alone.

I thought about the side effects of the pact. I gave him power and he gave me magic, and everything that came with it. So maybe it was just the crazy talking, but… no it was too risky.

Was it too risky?

What if I made a pact with Marshall? What if that stabilized the flow of energy? What if I could share the burden? I had access to his power. I had the Son’s magic. I could technically make a pact.

But something told me there was no way Marshall would agree to it. I didn’t even know how to make a pact. I’d heard Marshall say it once, but there was no way I could remember something like that. There was no way I could ask Gomme or Infernus without him getting suspicious; in fact, there was no guarantee he wasn’t listening into my thoughts even now. There was no way he’d give me information like that.

 _But what does it matter_?

I knew a lot of things that I wasn’t supposed to know. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d cast a spell on intuition. Who was to say that I couldn’t do the same thing with a pact?

I needed to make a plan. I couldn’t let him know about my intentions, so I needed a distraction… I needed to give him a fix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would count the number of times I used italics in this chapter but I’m pretty sure that number is higher than human comprehendibility.
> 
> 3000 words of straight backstory and plot so you whiners better not bitch about a single goddamn letter. XDD


	16. Things I Wanted to Know (And Things I Didn't)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gomme and Fionna talk about Shoko and Marshall is trash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did somebody say ExtenDEd diALogues??? Cuz if not then lol wow this is about to get awkward.

I woke up in the morning, which in itself was a huge success since I was so exhausted the night before I completely expected to sleep straight through the day. I knew I was going to have to ask Kaugomme about Shoko today, because I really did need to know, as much as I was afraid of what I would find out. If I was lucky, I might even be able to learn more about his past at the same time. I’d been so busy worrying about other things that I didn’t get the chance to worry about all of the images I’d seen in my vision when I allegedly dove into Kaugomme’s memories the other day.

The train had two stops to make that day before it went the straight shot to First City. All of the stops made the previous day were to rather small towns, so very few people had gotten on, only one other person in first class, and so I was unsurprised to see no one else in the first class lounge. There was a long couch and two armchairs around a glass table; some sort of tea and coffee station sat in the corner of the room, and there was a bar over in the next car that opened up during the evenings. I sat in the middle of the couch and picked up one of the magazines sitting on the glass table. It was a magazine that had gossip about some people I assumed to be big money in Midnaught having an affair, and some celebrity was pregnant with her second child. I browsed through about half of the magazine before it occurred to me that what I was reading wasn’t in English, and yet I’d understood it just fine. Spooked, I set it back down on the table and gazed out the window across from me.

All of Midnaught looked the same, the same grassy planes with holes in the earth, no hills, no significant landmarks of any kind except for the occasional village that seemed to sprout up out of nowhere, sometimes with farmlands accompanying. There were no rivers. There were no mountains. The sameness of it all was utterly eerie.

“You look a bit troubled,” someone said from my right and I jumped to see Kaugomme leaning against the back of the couch right next to me. A part of me, larger than I was proud to admit, was glad to see a person there at all, considering my recent episode.

“Gomme. You were just the person I wanted to talk to,” I said.

He flashed me a quick smile and moved to sit in one of the armchairs. “About Shoko, right? Marshall told me to talk to you about it. Said he’s too chicken to do it on his own.”

I rolled my eyes. “How considerate.” 

Gomme chuckled ironically, violet eyes flashing. “What can I say? He’s just the considerate type of guy.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “So? What can I do for you? Just want a general recap of what happened the day she died, right?”

“Yeah, that would be great.”

“I guess you deserve some general context first, though, or else it won’t make any sense,” Gumball said, folding his hands in his lap and looking out the window. “It was about 950 years ago that Marshall found Shoko. I’m not sure about the details of the meeting, just that he suddenly contacted us after a good fifty years of silence saying that he’d found us the perfect match. She was a strong sympathy magic user—not necessarily the most powerful user out there, but good enough that she was well worth our time, especially with the nature of her magic. Sympathy magic is… finicky. It’s easy to get lost in it, let the magic take you over and essentially turn into a hyper-aware vegetable. It’s happened to a good many sympathy magic users out there, unfortunately enough.

“So anyway, with that and something about her ‘soul’s compatibility’, Marshall whipped up a spell to make a pact with her, let us take energy from her and gain some of her abilities and whatnot. It was a bit different from the pact spell that Marshall used with you, and actually I think that difference is what led to our failure.

“We were on our way into Second City when we encountered Envy. Despite what you might think, Envy is probably the most loyal of Lucifer’s inner circle, so when she caught even the slightest indication that we were out to kill her boss, she turned hostile. We were forced into a huge, violent encounter with her that ended up destroying an entire train station, which isn’t really all that important, but notable, I suppose.

“Because of the nature of the pact, the three of us used Shoko as a sort of battery, and Shoko’s sympathy magic was also strengthened. As a result, when we used magic, we could go as fast and hard as we wanted with none of the painful side-effects, that is, until our battery ran out. I’m not really sure if it was a flaw in the pact or the sympathy magic that did her in, but our fighting ended up being too much for Shoko. Infernus had been the most reckless with his magic during the fight, and so he blames himself even though there was no way he could have known what was going on. She knew what was happening, I think, but she never told any of us about it. I don’t know why.

“Then, of course, when she died, right there in the middle of battle, it was like someone had yanked out our power cords, and we all immediately shut down, died right there on the spot. And it was a long time recovering, too. I think for Marshall it was three centuries, and I woke up five years later. Infernus didn’t come to until about a hundred-fifty years after I did. I don’t know how we weren’t dead for good, or worse, detained in one of Lucy’s finest prisons when we came to. Marshall must have cast something on Envy so that she wouldn’t turn us in, just in case we lost or something. I can’t think of any other reason why we’d even be around to try this second attempt.” Gomme heaved a heavy sigh, rubbing the back of his neck slowly. He’d kept his gaze fixed out the window until the very end of his anecdote, and then he finally looked back up at me. “That was a bit long, sorry. But that’s about what happened. As far as I remember it. The details are kind of hazy, but you don’t really need anything more than the basic concepts, I suppose.”

“Wow,” I said, letting out a long breath. “Yeah, you answered my question pretty much perfectly, though, so I’m not complaining… Thank you,” I added.

“It’s not a problem,” Gomme said. “I don’t know why Marshall didn’t want to tell you himself, but he’s a weird guy so I guess I don’t really know what goes on in his head _most_ of the time.” Gomme flashed me a little smirk. “I don’t suppose you’ve gone in and tried to sneak a little peak lately, huh?”

I laughed and shook my head. “Nah, he’d figure out what I was doing the second I started eavesdropping and go off on me, which would totally be a double-standard, since I’m pretty sure he’s keeping tabs on everyone 24/7. And I wouldn’t want another episode like last time…”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” he said.

“I’ve been thinking about that lately, actually. I wanted to ask you about a few of the images that I saw… I know it’s personal but it’s really been eating at me. If you don’t mind telling me?”

Gomme glanced warily down the hall in the direction of the first class rooms. “We’re not alone, you know.”

“I probably know a spell that can fix that,” I said.

Gomme cocked an eyebrow at me doubtfully.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said, mirroring his expression. I closed my eyes and emptied my head , focusing on what I was trying to accomplish. Suddenly a word appeared in my head. “ _Ganjingsil_ ,” I whispered.

It felt like a cloud was wrapped around my head. I glanced back at Kaugomme and he looked how I felt.

He shook his head. “Well, since you’ve gone through all the trouble, I guess I’ll tell you what I can.”

I nodded. “I’ll try to keep it short. I don’t know how long I can keep this up before I jeopardize the sanctity of my arms,” I said dryly. “What I think I saw was a flash of images, like little bits of memories, for a while. It was just unclear images that I couldn’t really put together and they were there and gone before I could even blink. I’m not going to ask you about those, though, ‘cause there was one image in the end that stayed longer. And… Marshall was there.”

Kaugomme tensed visibly and I saw his jaw clench. “Go on,” he said eventually.

“It wasn’t just an image, though. It was like Marshall was there and he was talking to me. Except, I guess, it wasn’t really me; it was you. I was looking through your eyes. And he wasn’t talking, either. I just… knew what he was saying, what he meant without him actually saying anything. He said he… He said that he wanted to fix you.”

Kaugomme’s eyes grew glossy for a moment and he put a hand on his forehead to cover them. “Fuck.”

 “What… what happened then? What was that?”

Kaugomme let out a shuddering sigh, wiping his hand down his face and looking up at me almost desperately. “That was the night that Marshall gave me the ability to hear.”

My eyes widened. “Wait, you mean _he_ was—” Take a moment, Fionna. Breathe. “Marshall was the one that gave you the ability to hear,” I said. “ _Why_ , though? Why would he feel the need to change y—”

“ _I don’t fucking know!_ ” Kaugomme shouted. He took a deep breath and repeated himself, “I don’t fucking know. Maybe he didn’t like the way I was. Maybe he just felt the need to fix what was broken.”

“Broken? No, why would he— _no_ —Gomme, _don’t_ say that. For God’s sake of all of the bad things you ever were or ever could be, _broken_ is not one of them. Never say that.” Gomme looked at me with a mixture of shock and disbelief on his face. “So you couldn’t hear. That just meant you had to work harder, be _better_ to get to where you got. And you learned rune sign language! Hell, that’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life! A man that knows how to create a mountain at the flick of his wrist doesn’t sound broken to me.”

Gomme stared at me for a long while, until he started laughing. He buried his head in his hands and laughed for about half a minute. “Jesus, Fionna, that was the sappiest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, laughing a little more. When he looked back up at me I saw the traces of tears on his face. “I think I sort of needed to hear that, though. So thanks, I guess.”

I smiled back at him. “So what happened then? After you said yes?”

Gomme’s smile fell straight into a frown. “Well, after I said yes—which was because of compulsion, by the way, if you didn’t get that vibe from your fancy little vision—we, ah… We both died. He did the spell; it was one of his own making, I could tell. He said some words and I don’t really know the details of it, but suddenly there was all of this _pain_ and waking up parts of my brain I hadn’t even known existed before, and everything was too loud and after that I blacked out and went into that field of nothingness that we go to whenever we ‘die.’ I woke up about a week later. Infernus had found the two of us and kept watch over our bodies; I left the dimension as soon as I woke up, though, having decided that I never wanted to see Marshall’s face again. He didn’t wake up until a year later. He was pretty upset when he woke up, too, according to Infernus of course ‘cause I sure as hell didn’t stick around for that. And that’s about it.”

I shook my head, frowning. “I can’t believe he used compulsion to make you say yes. If he was going to kill the both of you with a spell, I don’t see why he felt it necessary for you to give your false consent.”

“Well it… may not have been entirely the compulsion’s doing,” Gomme admitted. “I did sort of want to know what hearing was like. And while I guess I could have gone without it, I can’t say I totally regret being able to hear.”

“Well, still. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Gomme grimaced, scratching the side of his cheek weakly. “Actually… I think I have a pretty good idea about his motive, now that I think about it.”

“Yeah?”

“I think it was less about killing ‘us’ and more about killing ‘him.’ It was… a really complicated spell, lots of attention to detail, making sure to work through all the loopholes, checking in on itself a lot, to the point of excess. It was very, very well-written and required a very, very large amount of energy. I’m betting it was another suicide attempt.”

I almost heard the pieces clicking into place. Of course it wasn’t about Gomme. Gomme’s hearing was an opportunity. Some vast amount of misery and self-loathing drove him to take a possible opportunity for death over an opportunity for friendship, or maybe even something more than that.

“What about the kiss?” I asked.

Gomme groaned and leaned his head back against the chair, hands flopping to his sides. “Nothing gets past you, huh,” he said sourly. “We were sort of sleeping together at the time.”

“Sleeping together? But, wait, aren’t you—”

Gomme cut me off with a look that was so incredibly uninspired that I almost punched myself in the face to save him the trouble. “We are literally the spawn of Satan. You think a little bit of gay incest is gonna put us in an any less-favorable position?”

“Yeah. Sorry. That was a really dumb question.” A burning sensation crawling up my arms told me that I’d probably been at this for far too long. I looked down at my hands, bloodied up almost to my elbows. “Guess that means time’s up,” I said, dispelling the silencer.

“Here, I’ll help you get cleaned up,” Gomme offered, standing and waving his hands to force me to stand up, too.

“Thank you,” I said. We headed toward a washroom down the hall. Neither of us spoke about Marshall again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long story short, Marshall is an irredeemable hunk of trash that I’m somehow supposed to be pairing with unfortunate but totally sweethearted Fionna in some way, but Marshall keeps being trash and Fionna keeps being disappointed with his bullshittery. Don’t worry; it’ll all work out in the end, somehow. I haven’t exactly figured out how yet, but it’ll work.


	17. The Devil's Skin Tears like Paper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is some porn and then someone has a stroke yay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU’VE MADE IT TO CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. ALLOW ME TO REWARD YOU WITH PORN not really it’s mostly these idiots bitching at each other and then some .
> 
> Did I mention a blood kink yet? Cuz there’s a pretty hella blood kink in here. Like, it’s intense.

The train was just leaving its final stop. The last two stops had been in a larger town and a city, so many people had gotten on the train, but only three more in first class. The sun had just set, the subtle glow coming through the holes in the ground the barest indication that it was rising on the other side.

I was nervous.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

What the hell was I about to get myself into?

How was I even going to go about this?

When did I end up at Marshall’s door?

It occurred to me that I’d probably been standing there for at least a minute. I got the sudden urge to just run and pretend that none of this had ever happened. But I didn’t. Instead I found my hand raising, of its own volition, to knock on the door.

“No,” I heard Marshall say from inside, before my knuckles even touched the door.

“I haven’t even knocked yet,” I called back.

He stayed silent.

I banged my fist against the door.

“No.”

“Oh, come on,” I sighed.

“I know what you’re trying to do. And the answer is no.”

“I just wanna talk,” I said.

“No.”

I tried opening the door. It was locked.

“Marshall, open the door,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself,” he replied.

 _Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do here,_ I thought dryly.

“I heard that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” I concentrated on the lock in the door, twisting my hand like I was holding a key. I heard the door click. “No way, did that actually work?”

I walked inside, locking the door behind me. Marshall was scowling intensely at me from his armchair. He was holding a book and not wearing glasses, so I assumed it was a normal book for once.

“You know, if you really wanted to keep me out, you could have cast a spell on the door,” I said.

“I did,” he replied.

“Well you didn’t do a very good job at it.”

He gave me a look, putting his book asideZ. “I don’t get high off of my own anger, Fionna.”

“But wouldn’t it be convenient if you did.”

“Please leave,” he said.

“I just want to talk,” I said again.

“No you don’t. Please leave.”

“Why?”

“It won’t work.”

“How do you know? Have you ever tried it?”

“I have common fucking sense.”

I glared at him. “You’re starting to piss me off, you know.”

“Anger has a bitter flavor. I’m not tempted.”

I stalked forward, throwing my hands on either side of him and punching him in the mouth with my face. He kissed back immediately, albeit a little half-assed, and I kissed him until I had to pull back for air.

He stared back at me completely expressionless.

“Are you fucking serious right now?” I sighed, exasperated.

“Please get the fuck out of my room,” he said.

“If you really wanted me to get out, you could have forced me already.”

“I’m trying to be polite by giving you the choice to please get the fuck out of my room.”

“Not gonna happen,” I said, sitting down so I was straddling his lap and hanging my arms loosely around his neck. “You know, if you really wanted, you could have stopped me from coming in at all. You probably could have eliminated the thought the moment I even had it.”

“Elimination of thought is banned by Magic Law as stated by section 483-C.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.”

“That was thought alteration, which is banned by section 480, and I’ve only ever used it once on you and it was unsuccessful. There’re a lot more interesting laws that I’ve broken that you’d love to hear about, I’m sure.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I thought I’d offer. Couldn’t have you getting the wrong impression of me.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Of course not.” I played with the hair on the nape of his neck absentmindedly and his eyes fluttered closed. “So now that we’ve established that I’m not leaving—”

“We haven’t established anything.”

“—what’s  there to stop me from making the pact right now?”

He growled at me a little, opening his eyes just barely to look at me. “The person you’re making a pact with has to be in a state of heightened emotional and physical stimulation, which I’m not. Then you need to have, you know, an actual _spell_ for a pact written out, because making it up on the fly tends to make for some really fucked up side-effects. Also your nails aren’t sharp enough.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” I said, scraping my nails down his neck to make a point.

“That so?” He looked so angry; it was sort of really cute. “Prove it.”

I stopped and scowled at him for a moment, eyebrows raised. “You don’t think I can do it.”

“Never said that.” He closed his eyes again. He was _totally_ saying that.

“Don’t tell me that’s what this is all about; you just wanting to see what I can do.”

“Never said that either.” The corner of his mouth twitched. He was definitely totally saying that.

“Okay, then, I’ll prove it,” I said. I tangled my fingers in his hair and pulled the slightest bit. “I’ll prove you wrong.”

Marshall looked like he might have had a response to that but he was soon too busy with my face to form words. He kissed me back more enthusiastically than before, opening his mouth and letting me taste him. After a minute I pulled back again, breathing heavily.

Marshall looked bored.

“You’ll have to do more than that to impress me.”

I glared at him, licking my lips. A word came tumbling from my mouth before I even knew what I was saying. “ _Mohguidejao_.” I suddenly felt my fingernails grow longer and sharper, color changing to black onyx.

Marshall raised his eyebrows at me. “Okay, I’m a little impressed.”

I pulled him back in for another kiss, rolling my body against his and digging my nails into his shoulders, enough to elicit a soft groan.

“I wanna see your scars,” I whispered hotly next to his ear.

He smirked a bit as I pulled up his shirt. He obligingly lifted up his arms, but I was disappointed to see his skin looking… normal.

“The fuck is this?” I said. He kept smirking at me. “You fucker, are you messing with my perception again?”

“Maybe,” he said, sliding his hands down to my hips, rubbing little circles with his thumbs. “Why don’t you show me where they’re supposed to go?”

“You are seriously such a chore,” I said, smiling darkly. “Let’s see… I think I remember one…” I felt my hands against his chest, admiring the contrast of my nails against his almost ashen skin. I traced a diagonal line across his chest from his shoulder to the bottom of his ribcage, digging in my nail and watching as tiny drops of red pooled against the cut. I brought my nail up to my lips and licked away the blood. “There.”

Marshall’s head was tilted back, eyes closed. “Mm, that was a little hot,” he said.

“Don’t tell me you get off on your own pain, Marshall.”

“Not particularly,” he said, opening one eye. “But you do.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong.

“What, and you get off on me getting off?” I asked.

“Mmhm,” he confessed easily.

“Pervy little slut.”

“Stop talking,” he growled, leaning forward to kiss me, tasting the trace his own blood on my lips. I slipped off my shirt, so I wouldn’t get it dirty, you know, and pressed myself against him, threatening his neck with my nails as I softly bit his lip. “Mmkay,” he whispered, pulling away the smallest bit. “I’ll admit, I like the flavor of this.”

I smiled against his lips and traced the column his throat, slowly running a nail down his windpipe, just cutting the skin. “There’s one here, too,” I whispered, leaning down to lick up the line that I’d traced then returning to kiss him with the metallic tang of blood on my tongue.

Marshall finally moved his hands, one tangling in my hair and the other scratching softly down my side. He pulled back and looked down at me, staring at my chest.

“I really should have gotten you something more interesting,” he said offhandedly.

I followed his gaze down. I had on a plain white t-shirt bra. It was comfy, at least. “Yeah,” I agreed, “I have much cuter stuff at home. This is pretty boring.”

“Too bad I didn’t think I’d be making a habit of fucking the pact holder while I was shopping.”

I gave him a look.

“I have a bad habit of grossly overestimating my self-control with you.”

“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Wow, stop talking.”

“You started it.”

“Just add it to my ever-increasing pile of regrets,” he muttered, leaning down to my collarbone and biting gently. Not like it would really hurt if he tried to bite harder. Hell, he might have been biting as hard as he possibly could and I wouldn’t know.

He distracted me from that thought, though, unhooking my bra and throwing it onto the floor. He bit the skin above my breastbone and sucked, though I knew it wouldn’t leave a bruise.

“Sucks that I can’t mark you up anymore,” he murmured against my skin. “Your pain kink was a real turn on.” His fingers ghosted over my wrists, which had scabbed over and were already cleared up in places.

“You can technically do it if you use magic,” I noted, scraping my nails lightly against his sides where I knew he was covered in claw marks.

“Are you suggesting something?” he asked, pulling my chest up against his and kissing where my jaw met my neck.

“Well, it _would_ be to both of our benefits…”

“Trying to get me blood high, Fionna? What, need a crutch that bad? Don’t think you can do it with just your body?”

“I can _do_ it, dickbag. It would just be faster. And less effort.”

He chuckled. “And take away the challenge? I don’t think so. If I’m going to let you go through with this stupid idea—which, in case I haven’t mentioned yet, is a _very_ stupid idea and will probably end up giving you a heart attack or something—you’ve gotta work for it.”

“Fuckwad.”

“Hey, I haven’t even broken your hands yet; you should be thankful,” he said. Then his eyes gleamed in the way that meant he had an idea that I probably wouldn’t like. “Oh. Here’s an idea.”

“I don’t think I like your ideas.”

“If you can get me to cum first, I won’t give you any shit about your stupid idea. Make your pact, face the consequences, whatever. I promise I won’t bitch.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Good luck making a pact with broken hands.”

“Seems a little drastic.”

“As though making a pact with the Devil’s Son isn’t drastic.”

“Point taken. Okay, I’ll take your dumb little challenge.”

“It wasn’t an option anyway."

I shut up his stupid face with my mouth and he kissed back with more enthusiasm than he’d ever kissed me with before. He must have known how much I enjoyed making out. But I wasn’t going to let that get me off so quickly this time.

“We should probably move to your bed,” I breathed, threatening to sink my nails into his shoulders but not quite breaking skin.

“Make me.”

“Fine, I will, asshole.”

I stood up and punched the button that made the bed slide out of the wall, then signed Marshall’s lazy ass up from the chair, forcing his body backwards onto the bed. My movements weren’t as smooth as Gomme’s would have been, but it got the job done, and best of all it made Marshall look uncomfortable.

“Déjà vu,” he grunted once he had his body back.

“Tmi,” I replied.

I stripped my pants off before straddling his hips, leaning over him and kissing him, some of the traces of his own blood still on my lips.

Marshall pulled back and stared pointedly at my chest. “I don’t know if I like being on the bottom,” he said.

“Then flip us.”

“But the view here. It’s fantastic.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“That’s why I’m conflicted.”

“You’re not allowed to talk anymore.”

I flipped us over to save him the trouble and myself the patronization. Marshall decided that was his cue to take the lead, kissing me roughly and grazing his nails down my sides. His hands continued to travel downward, toying with the edge of my panties. Meanwhile I worked on the button of his jeans because he was not nearly naked enough yet, especially for the amount of naked that I was.

“These. Off,” I said, finally unbuttoning his pants. He complied quite willingly, standing momentarily to strip and I sat up halfway to watch. “Really? No underwear? You really were looking forward to this.”

“Happy accident,” he insisted, crawling back on top of me to leave a trail of open-mouthed kisses down my neck and chest.

“You scars are back,” I noted, staring at the burn on his shoulder that faded into an interesting pattern on his back that strongly resembled lightning.

“They turn you on,” he explained.

I scoffed. “You’re not going to win,” I said.

“I’m not going to lose,” he insisted.

His hands travelled back downwards, a finger stroking me softly and I suppressed a shiver.

“You like that?” he asked, rubbing me lazily but enough to drive me wild.

“Shut up,” I said, moving my hands down to grab his perfect ass. Fucking Christ his ass though. I was convinced that Marshall was the man posing for all of those ancient marble sculptures, if not just the personification of a sculpture by Michelangelo.

“Didn’t you compare me to a Michelangelo sculpture last time you saw me naked?” Marshall asked.

“Probably,” I said. “I mean, you are, though.”

Marshall smirked. “Michelangelo didn’t know how to sculpt a dick.”

“Well you would know— _ah_!” I wasn’t entirely sure when my panties had been discarded, but I definitely felt the finger that was suddenly being pushed into me _in the middle of my goddamn sentence._ “ _Marshall_!” I tried to yell but it came out more like a moan.

“Ooh, I think I like it when you say my name. Do it again,” he said, rubbing his finger against that spot that drove me wild right away. He had a good memory, I’d give him that much.

“ _Fuck you_ ,” I hissed.

“Well, if you insist…” He spread my legs apart and thrust into me without warning. I gasped at the familiarly foreign feeling, trying to regain my bearings as an intense shock travelled up my spine.

“You have got to give me a better heads-up before you just _do_ that,” I griped, but it came out sounding a little breathy and odd.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling out and looking me dead in the eyes. “Fionna, I’m gonna put my dick in you now, ‘kay?”

I slapped my hand against my forehead as he pushed back in. “ _Jesus Christ.”_

“You really should try not to yell out the wrong name during sex. Or was that meant to be a compliment?”

I didn’t get much of a chance to respond to his bullshit because he started moving as he was talking, and I wasn’t the best at multitasking. Instead, I uttered some string of curses that didn’t quite come out right and I couldn’t be bothered to care because Marshall fucking Abadeer was fucking me like some sort of sex god and I was falling apart much faster than I’d intended.

His pace was hard and fast like it always was with me, and there was some level of desperation to it that made my muscles clench and my toes curl. He leaned down and kissed my neck and bit my skin and pulled my hair and did all of those other things that I couldn’t handle all at once.

At this rate, there was no way I’d win. And then Marshall would break my hands—I didn’t believe in empty threats coming from that man—and I’d have to wait however long for that to heal and think of some other way to make a pact with Marshall and that just didn’t sound like something I wanted to do.

So I decided to cheat.

“ _Sensathios_ ,” was the word that came to mind that I said in a sigh. Marshall stopped for a moment and he looked at me like he couldn’t believe what I’d just done. Then he moved again and we both gasped.

I could feel _everything_.

I felt my skin on his skin and his body against mine and when he moved that pulse of warmth and pleasure doubled.

“I cannot believe you just did that. That’s so cheap,” he said, emphasizing every syllable with a thrust that had us arching into one another.

“Mm, you were gonna win, though,” I moaned.

“Well now we’re both losers, huh.”

I held onto Marshall’s neck like a vice and dug my nails into his shoulders. He closed his eyes and huffed with each push, blood and sweat and sex slickening his skin. I felt the heat coiling in his abdomen and knew that he was just as close as I was. Just a few more thrusts and we fell over the edge.

Marshall’s head fell against my chest and we both breathed heavily, coming down from the initial high.

“Okay, just so we’re clear,” I breathed after a minute, “what the hell kinda spell did I just use on you?”

He scoffed. “Figures you wouldn’t know. It was a sympathy spell. Makes you and another person essentially share a nervous system for a little while. It should fade soon if it hasn’t already,” he explained.

“Huh. Go me.”

“Yeah, nice work, _Bunny_.”

I made a pointed decision not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction from that. “So… who wins the bet, then?”

“Well since you fucking cheated I think I should win,” he said, sitting back on his knees and helping me sit up with him, “but I’ll settle for a compromise because that felt really fucking good.”

“Compromise how?”

“I’ll let you make the pact, but I’m going to bitch about it for every waking moment of your puny human existence.”

Score. “I’ll take it,” I said.

I found myself just staring at him after that, however, totally at a loss of where to start.

“What, you need a jump start? You should take the ring off, first; that’ll make it easier,” he said.

I did as he told, feeling the gestures of foreign thoughts seeping into my mind. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what words to say, too, huh?”

He smirked. “I’d rather see how much you remember about spell writing.”

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. “What I remember? I don’t know anything about spell writing. What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see.”

I gave him a troubled frown, but didn’t push it any further. My hand hovered over his back, uncertain where to go. “You don’t really care where I put it, do you?”

“You could put it on my ass for all I care, s’long as I don’t have to look at it,” he said. I thought I picked up a slight tremor in his voice but chose to ignore it.

I found a spot on the back of his shoulder that wasn’t already riddled with scars. Taking a deep breath, I cleared my mind, focusing on what memories of the pacts that I had, waiting for my desires to form words.

“ _Yi kanodus im Mahrsaellana wehrls, iwehr idesum din syuls kano un syu pomuneizo toina syuna bervihn kano istasna iproche.*”_

My nail scraped a seven-pointed star into his skin as I spoke, like it was acting of its own volition. I felt the cuts on my arms reopen and grunted as a strange energy started to flow through me.

The change wasn’t immediate. Marshall had stayed silent throughout the making of the pact—aside from his offhand mental comment that my word choice wasn’t half bad, if not a little lazy, whatever that was supposed to mean. As I made the final cut, though, Marshall suddenly gasped. Our eyes locked.

I’d never seen anyone look more terrified than he looked in that moment.

“This is about to hurt a lot,” he said. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about himself. It was like a dam broke; the little trickle of information that I was getting from him before burst into a flood. I was staring at him and I was looking at myself. I was thinking my own thoughts and I was thinking his thoughts. I was feeling my heart hammering in my chest and I felt his heartbeat at the same time like it was my own. My mind had expanded; it doubled. It felt like an impossible dream and yet I was wide awake.

And then came the noise.

At first it was just my thoughts and his thoughts, our internal monologues dancing around each other without crossing. And then it was Infernus, thinking something in another language that I found I could somehow understand. Then it was Kaugomme, and Bonnie, and Marcie. Then it was the other passengers and the train conductor. Then the fleeting thoughts of people in passing towns and cities.

And it only got louder.

There was a buzzing, ringing in my ears as I picked up the whispers of thought of people on the other side of Midnaught. _How did I even know where they were coming from?_

Then a few thoughts from Ordolholm.

It was dead silent and I heard everything.

A stab of pain told me that someone back home was just breaking up with their boyfriend. A swelling in my heart told me that a nomad was longing for his loved ones in a home he didn’t have. A wave of distress told me that an angel in Aarseria had fallen. A fog in the mind of someone in Dӕmangia told me that Marshall had them under some sort of spell. A stranger’s whisper in my head told me I made the right decision. An ache in my body told me that I made the wrong one.

My ears were ringing.

I was everywhere but nobody saw me. I felt everyone but nobody felt me. I saw everything and I was blind, and I said everything and I was mute, and I touched everything and I was numb, and I heard everything and I was deaf but it was so loud. It was so loud. It was ringing. It was so loud.

It was ringing and I was yelling and I had my arms stretched out and I was looking at me and saying my name and shaking my shoulders and I wouldn’t budge. It was ringing and I was afraid and I couldn’t move and I just kept shaking and I couldn’t move and everything felt red and foggy and loud and ringing and ringing and _ringing and **ringing and RINGING AND**_ —

“ _Fionna!_ ” Marshall shouted.

I snapped my head up from where it had lolled backward. Marshall’s eyes were as clear as I’d ever seen them, shining with the panic’s relieved afterglow. We were separate again, but I still felt as though I had spikes driven into my skull, and the background noise was still there. It was still almost unbearably loud. I felt like crying a little.

I tried to move my mouth to respond but my muscles weren’t working right. I felt something warm trickling from my nose but when I reached up to wipe it away my arm was weak and jerky.

“Wah ih hauen…” I started, but realizing that talking wasn’t something that was going to happen right then, I just thought really loudly at Marshall. _What is happening to me?_

Marshall opened his mouth then closed it again. “I… Okay, it worked,” he began.“You did it. You made a pact. It was very stupid. I feel great. You just had a stroke.”

_A-a what!? A fucking stroke!?_

“Yes indeed that is what I said. You had a nervous overload, a blood vessel popped—which I didn’t think would be possible in your condition but you never cease to surprise me—it healed itself rather quickly; there’s no permanent damage, but you’ll have trouble moving for a little bit.”

_H-How did… HOW!?_

“I don’t know how the fuck you thought something like this wouldn’t happen, honestly. You’re literally sharing my _brain_. My brain that has at least ten times the capacity from a regular human brain. You were bound to be overwhelmed.”

 _Why didn’t you_ tell _me about this earlier!?_

“I didn’t know exactly what would happen until you said the actual pact. Plus, what makes you think that you would even fucking listen to me??”

_That’s probably true._

“You don’t fucking say.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. _When will I recover?_

“I’m not sure. Surely you’ll be fine in a night or two. You probably just need rest.”

_So like… this isn’t gonna kill me, is it?_

“You’re alive so far. I bet you didn’t notice that I put the ring back on you. It should mostly sever our conscious neural link as long as you have it on, which will help. But our subconsciousnesses are essentially one in the same, so don’t expect the headaches to just go away. At least not for a while.”

_Our… neural link?_

“Were you not listening before? You’re in my head. _Literally_. Ever see that movie _Pacific Rim_? It’s basically that, only more permanent and fewer giant robots.”

 _I’m still not exactly following. Well, I mean, I think I know what you mean, but I just don’t quite get what the pact_ did.

“You made the damn thing, how do you not know?”

_I just do what the voice in my head tells me to do! Doesn’t mean I understand it!_

Marshall heaved a sigh. “Looks like I just have to tell you everything.”

 _Looks like you do._ I tried to glare at him but half of my face felt sort of numb so I probably just looked stupid.

“In the morning, though.”

_What the hell! Why not now?_

“You need all of the rest you can get. Truth be told, I’m trying to hold some of it back right now, the… crazy.” Marshall’s expression turned somber. “Okay, look. Before you pass out on me or anything—I know you’re tired; don’t deny it—I want you to just… be aware of what you might see. I don’t know how long I can hold it back for you, and that ring definitely won’t last you more than a week with the amount of magic you’re cycling.”

_What do you mean?_

“I mean we share a subconsciousness now, and I’m not sure what you might find when you go to sleep. Just… I get the feeling I won’t be keeping any secrets from you anymore, but I don’t exactly feel like pouring it all out at this very moment.”

_I… Oh. Okay. That’s… Okay. That’s fine. I won’t make you talk about anything I see… unless you want to._

“Yeah, that… that would be great. Thanks.”

 _It’s nothing… I guess I’ll go to sleep now. I’m really tired._ I struggled to lay back in Marshall’s bed, and he ended up having to do most of the work for me. _Thanks_ , I thought.

“Of course… Good night, then.”

_Good night._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I make this pact in the words of Mahrsaella that bond two souls so that one may borrow the other’s plight for the promise of power.
> 
> I made up the language by combining sounds from Latin and Greek then making up grammar rules as I went along. The word-by-word translation is something like “I make-pact in Mahrsaella’s words, saying bonding two souls making one soul borrow his soul’s plight making power’s promise.” I love languages.
> 
> OKAY SO LIKE. I’M REALLY BAD. AT THE WRITING OF THE SEXYTIMES. AHH. SO I AM SORRY. I’M PRETTY SURE IT’S SHIT. I TRIED. OTL. At least I got to write another blip of slightly high Marshall, which is a lot like normal Marshall only he slurs more.
> 
> But yeah things are about to get really, really different for everyone.


	18. The Soul Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> an offensive amount of plot development occurs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO’S READY FOR SOME IMAGERY AND PLOT CUZ THAT’S LITERALLY ALL THIS IS WHOOP WHOOP.

I was surrounded on all sides.

_“You’re a nuisance.”_

_“Worthless.”_

_“Pathetic.”_

Bony hands came out of the dirt and held me down. Three dogs barked and snarled at me, roaring in disdain, tearing my skin apart with words sharper than their claws. The forest was dark and empty and no one could hear me calling and yelling and screaming. My body was useless. I was bleeding out and my skin wouldn’t heal. Blood burned in my veins and my vision went red. A shadow in the background with glowing red eyes turned his back on me and chuckled into the darkness.

_“Rest in peace, bastard.”_

I my eyes snapped open and I shot up, chest heaving. I looked out the window and saw that the sun was just beginning to rise. Marshall was awake next to me, staring at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Why are—was that _your_ dream?” I said, holding a hand over my heart as though that would calm it. My right side still felt a little weak, but it was much better than how I’d felt a few hours prior. I looked down and noticed that my nails were still black and sharp and wondered idly if that would ever wear off or if they’d just be stuck like that forever.

“Mmhm,” he hummed.

“Is this a common thing for you?”

He nodded.

I let my hand fall to my side and sat back again. “Shit.”

“That’s one of the tamer ones,” he said, eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

“Christ, I’m never going to get any sleep again. For the rest of my life.”

“You’ll get used to it,” he said.

I frowned. “I don’t know that I exactly _want_ to get used to it.”

“Yeah, well. You _get_ to now.”

I sighed, watching the silence hang in the air. Maybe I hadn’t thought this whole “make a pact with the most mentally unstable person I know” thing through well enough. But I had no idea how to undo a pact, and something told me it wouldn’t be that easy if I did, so as much as this would suck, the benefits outweighed the consequences.

I turned onto my side and looked at Marshall. “What did I say last night? In my pact?”

“Yi kanodus im Mahrsaellana wehrls, iwehr idesum din syuls kano un syu pomuneizo toina syuna bervihn kano istasna iproche.”

“I meant what did the words mean, smartass. What language was it in? Did it, like… make sense or whatever?” Though, admittedly whatever accent Marshall said that in sounded pretty hot.

I sensed annoyance radiating off of Marshall.

“Oh, come on, we’ve already established that I’m a cheating bullshitter. Now tell me what I said.”

“‘I speak in the words of Marshall that bind two souls so that one may borrow the other’s plight for the promise of power.’”

I turned again and joined him in staring at the ceiling. “Oh.”

“You used the Language of Truth, which was a pretty good move on your part. You basically said ‘do what he did,’ just with the added specification of basically sharing my brain. No major loopholes that I can see just yet, but we’ll see how long that lasts.”

“So the Language of Truth. Is that what all of the spells I know are written in?”

“I thought it was, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What do you mean?”

“That other spell you used. ‘Devil’s nails,’ I think. That wasn’t the Language of Truth.”

“What language was it?”

I felt Marshall shrug. “Dunno. Well, I might know, but I’m not sure. I can find out, though.”

“You can?”

Marshall turned over and I could feel him staring at me.

“What?”

“Wanna try something crazy?” he asked.

I frowned. “What kind of crazy?” I said.

“Have you ever looked into a soul before?”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“Everything, basically,” he said. He sat up, looking at me impatiently to imply I should do the same.

“What are we doing?” I asked sitting up with him, crossing my arms when I remembered I was still naked.

He rolled his eyes. “We literally share a brain and you’re still self-conscious about your body.”

I gave him a pointed stare. “I’ll take all the privacy I can get,” I snapped.

“Jesus, fine, put on a shirt if you’re that uncomfortable. I need your hands.”

“Fine,” I said, leaning over and putting on the first shirt I found, which happened to be his. “Okay,” I said, sitting back down and holding my hands out for him to grab. “So what are we doing?”

“First, I’ll need to take off your ring, so prepare yourself for a fuck ton of pain and try not to have another stroke.”

I froze when he mentioned the ring. I’d been ignoring the ringing in my ears up until then, but everything flooded back to me and my head started to pound. I brought a hand up to my temple, feeling a little faint.

“Hey. _Hey_ ,” Marshall said, patting the side of my face. “Look at me.” My eyes were darting around everywhere and I couldn’t focus. “ _Look at me_ ,” he repeated, grabbing the sides of my head. The room stopped spinning and the ringing dulled a bit. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this, if it’s this bad for you with the muffler on.”

I held his hands against my face and breathed deeply, pushing the dizziness away. “No, I can do this,” I said.

He brought our hands down again and held my thumb, fingers rubbing against the smooth metal. “You sure?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes.

He didn’t give me a moment to reconsider, taking off the ring and immediately jumping into a spell. “ _Indei nabis im syuna thani im syu. Indei nabis im syuna praetho im syu. Indei nabis im syuna soivi im syu_ ” My head throbbed and he chanted it over and over, squeezing my hands tightly. I couldn’t tell if it was my head or something else, but I felt time begin to melt away; it felt like I was falling backwards and lunging forwards at the same time, Marshall’s hands all I had to ground myself. I felt like my chest was being ripped apart as I was sucked into a realm of sensations. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter at the whipping wind that came out of nowhere. Something smelled like rain and saltwater and the roaring of waves crashed in my ears.

I opened my eyes and everything was still.

I was standing on water as still as a mirror, surrounded by light and mist. Marshall stood in front of me, still grasping my hands tightly. His eyes opened slowly, pupils constricting and irises a deep maroon. His ashy skin looked almost gray in the blue light. He looked to his right and I followed his gaze to a bright white sphere surrounded by ribbons of color. The outermost layer was a brilliant blue, the inner layers red then green.

“Don’t let go of me,” he said, releasing one hand and turning to walk toward the white sphere. I trailed behind him somewhat warily.

“Where are we?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just kept walking forward, each step making ripples in the silver water below, splashing around his footsteps.

It was farther away than I thought it would be, and bigger than I thought, too. We walked under enormous ribbons of light that swayed and swirled in our presence. It almost felt like they were alive, wary but curious about their visitors.

We passed the ring of blue and stopped under the ring of red. Marshall held his hand out, and the edge of one of the ribbons came down to greet him. I was surprised to see what looked like writing, though the language was not one that I knew by looking at it. It almost appeared to be some sort of strange mixture of runes and some Asian language.

“This is your soul room,” he finally answered. “That’s your soul,” he said, gesturing toward the white circle of light.

“My… my _what?_ My _soul_?” I said, looking at him incredulously.

He hummed in reply.

“Then what are all of,” I gestured all around us, “these?”

“They’re your past lives. Well, the blue one is your current life right now. This red one is your most recent life.”

I held my hand out and the ribbons came swarming toward it, dancing around me as if to greet me. “They like me,” I laughed.

“I would hope so,” Marshall said, smiling and holding back a chuckle. “They’re you, after all.”

“So what does it say? On the ribbons, I mean. Any clues?”

“It looks like you had a past life as a witch,” he said, “in China, possibly, a few hundred years ago. Probably while I was dead. I’m surprised; you have two lives on Earth in a row. It’s uncommon.”

“Is that where I got that spell from?” I asked, referring to my still black and claw-like nails. It didn’t look like those would be going away anytime soon.

“Seems to be the case,” he said. “It looks like you had a specialty in transmutation. I’m surprised the ribbon is this long with how magic users are treated in your realm. You must have been hard to catch.”

“I’m a survivor, I guess,” I said. I stared up at the rivers of red above me. “It’s weird. I didn’t know there were witches on Earth.”

Marshall smirked. “There’s a lot you don’t know about your own planet.” He started walking again and the red floated away, returning to its orbit around the glowing white sphere. “There’s a lot you don’t know…” He trailed off and stopped walking, staring a hole into the ground beneath him.

“Marshall?”

“Sorry. There’s something else I need to look at, while we’re here. Do you mind?”

I shook my head. “What is it?” I asked.

He sighed. “Just another thing I probably should have told you about sooner.”

The more we walked the brighter it was. The ring of red ended and the ring of green began, behaving oddly compared to the other two. It moved faster, more jerkily, and was notably thinner than the other strands. It gravitated toward Marshall with the same familiarity that the other ribbon had shown me. The realization started to sink in.

“Marshall have you… been here before?” I said.

 “I guess the act is up,” he said with little expression. He held out his hand and the ribbon came to meet him immediately. Purple runes glowed beneath his fingertips, looking to be carved out of light.

“Marshall, what is this? Is that a spell?” I asked. My jaw dropped and I almost let go of his hand. “Did you write that, Marshall?”

“Yes.” But it wasn’t Marshall that said it.

I looked up to see a translucent woman standing in front of us. Her hair was onyx black and her eyes could pierce through rock. She stood awkwardly, one hand resting on her hip. Her other arm was gone.

Marshall sucked in a deep breath and his eyes widened. “I didn’t expect you to show up.”

The girl cocked her head and frowned. “You come barging into my house then act surprised when I’m home?” she said. “You really haven’t changed.”

“Shoko…” I murmured. Her voice was exactly the same as the one I’d heard whispering in my head .

“I see blonde me decided to make a star pact with you.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure you had your hand in it, too.”

“Well who else was supposed to tell her what to say?” Shoko said, smirking.

Marshall glared at her.

“What are we just going to continue having this conversation like she’s not right there? She looks more confused than a grandma with Alzheimer’s right now. I think you owe her an explanation.”

I nodded slowly, paying more attention to the way the two were talking to each other than what was actually being said. They were familiar with each other, which I hadn’t expected with the way Marshall refused to even bring up her name. Though, maybe that was for a reas.

Marshall glanced at her then looked back at me. “I think she learns better by doing, actually,” he said. He took our clasped hands and held them forward, letting the strings of green light swirl around us, surrounding us. I watched as Shoko’s form melted into the light, and everything went white.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

I was vaguely aware that the body that I was wearing was not my own. The room I was in was dank and dark and fuzzy around the edges. Marshall was sitting across from me, face smirking and eyes glowing brightly. He looked maybe a couple of years younger, which probably meant that this encounter had taken place several hundred years ago.

“I’d like to offer you a deal,” he was saying.

“Go on,” I urged, my voice taking on the lower, smoother tone that was distinctly Shoko.

“Luci has had his time to pull the strings, and I think it’s time to get rid of him.”

I felt my eyebrows rise and crossed my single arm across my chest, holding it as though there was another arm there. “And how in the world do you suggest we do that.”

“It won’t happen overnight,” he said. “It’ll take a while. Hundreds of years, maybe a thousand.”

“I hate to break it to you, hon, but I don’t have a thousand years at my disposal. I’m a witch, not an immortal,” I said impatiently.

“And I’m sure that you of all people know about soul reincarnation.”

I scoffed. “Okay, wow. You expect me to buy into that? Even if I were reincarnated, there’s no way my future life would have any access to anything I did in this life. That’s not how it works.”

Marshall clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “I’ve never been one for following rules, you know.”

“I’ll ask you again. What are you suggesting?”

“I can tell you’re a young soul. First generation. That’s a good thing; you’re sure to have a lot more cycles on you. I’m suggesting that we make a pact.”

“A pact,” I parroted. “Explain.”

“Pact might be the wrong word for it. There will be pacts involved, that is, but what I want to do is more like… encoding.”

“I don’t understand. You’re being vague.”

He laughed. “It’s the only thing I’m good at,” he admitted. “I want to write a spell on your soul, is what I’m getting at.”

“Okay. And how does one exactly do that?”

“I’m glad you asked.”

I flashed forward and suddenly I was in my own soul room again, but there was only one glowing ribbon around the white sphere. I also noticed that, while the ground was distinctly reflective, my soul had no reflection.

“What is this place?” Shoko’s voice asked.

“It’s a visual manifestation of your soul. That circle in the middle there is your core, then around that is sort of a record of your life. It’s what makes you who you are in this life.”

“And you want to take my ‘life ribbon’ and write some spell into it,” I said.

“Yes.”

 “Okay.” I shrugged. “Tell me what the spell says.”

Marshall held his hands out in front of him and a long string of words appeared above them, written in the Language of Truth. “ _With these words I break down the barriers of time within this soul. Let power manifest within this core that only expands over times and lifetimes. Let it be that this power gathers at the fingertips of the one that holds the pact with the three devils and by their hand will evil tremble. With these words I bind this soul to this writer and grant the potential to change what is inevitable and unstoppable. They Are The Inevitable. They Are The Unstoppable._ ”

“Seems a bit… vague for the supposed greatest spellwriter in the multiverse,” I noted.

“Do you see the end there?”

“You mean the capitalized letters? Tati tatu? What does that mean?”

“Avoiding misperception,” he said. “It means that whenever it’s activated, I’ll have a mental check on it and I can decide what power is allowed when, so it can’t just run rampant. It’s more convenient than trying to work past all of the loopholes.”

“So it’s an ongoing spell rather than something you throw in all at once. Smart. Less limited.” I nodded. “So you’re turning me into a demigod in a future life. Big responsibility. How does that help you destroy the Devil?”

Marshall smiled. “I can’t do it alone,” he said. “If you hadn’t noticed, it’s written out to be a joint effort. Lucifer has the advantage of two minds controlling one body. I figure two minds controlling two bodies is a good way to one-up that.”

“And then after you kill him? What do you suppose happens next? Negativity like that doesn’t just go away. There has to be balance.”

Marshall’s face relaxed into an expression I could only describe as sinister. “It has to go somewhere,” he said. His tone sent a tremor down my spine.

His face was peacefully hostile; it was incredibly unnerving. I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eyes or ask him anything else. My throat was tight and I swallowed thickly around nothing. “Do it, then,” I said.

“…Are you sure?” he asked after a moment. I didn’t look back at his face to see his expression.

I just nodded.

“You… do realize I’m asking you to die, right?” he said, voice much softer. I looked up at him and he was staring at the ground. “We’ll activate this spell for a little while, just to get it started, and then I’m going to kill you.”

“I figured it would work like that.” I nodded again, slowly. “It needs to be done.”

“But I’ll find you again,” he said, looking up and holding my gaze with his. “In another life. When the conditions are right.”

“I believe you. Just… do it. Before I lose my nerve.”

He held his hands forward and the green ribbon of light, that apparently contained everything that made me who I was, came to him. It circled him slowly, timidly, unsure. Slowly, the words in his hands rose and fused into the green, creating a light that nearly blinded me.

“No one can know of this. Not until the time is right…” his whisper reverberated in my ears as I faded out.

In the next moment I felt the familiar sensation of nails piercing skin in the shape of a seven-pointed star. My eyes locked with a scrutinizing, almost wary amber gaze.

“It’s done,” Infernus said. “And it had better work.”

Marshall’s smile was easygoing, and lying. I felt it the moment the final pact had been made, just a suggestion in the back of my mind but it was there, the link. There were other signs I could have sensed before, heightened body temperature, irregular heartbeat, the quiver in his eyes, but at that moment I just knew, without even thinking. Surely that meant that he knew what I was feeling, too.

The scenery suddenly changed and in the next moment I felt the life being sucked out of me. It started in my fingers and toes and crawled up my arms and legs and I struggled to stay on my feet.

 _Are you okay?_ I heard Marshall’s voice in my head.

 _It’s happening_ , I thought back.

My legs were numb and I fell to my knees. I looked up into the fray of battle, a woman with tentacle-like hands stretching out of her back being ambushed by a wave of fire, held in place in the air and body contorting as she screamed.

 _Hold on just a little longer_ , he told me. _I’m almost done. Just a little longer._

 _I don’t know if I can._ My eyes squeezed shut when I realized I could barely see out of them anymore. Everything was numb except for the beating of my heart. I couldn’t breathe.

_Come on, don’t die on me now. Not when we’ve come so close._

_I’m trying!_ If I could feel I would know about the tears streaming down my face, the sheen of sweat that covered my body, matted hair sticking to my skin as I was drained down to the last percent. I could almost hear Marshall’s chant. His wrists were bloodied, somehow only using his own magic, for I was sure that whatever spell he was working on that caused _him_ to bleed would kill me in an instant.

 _It’s finished,_ he said.

I wanted so badly to look up again. To see them one last time. To experience the last moments of my short life. This was what I signed up for. This was what I should have expected. Why was I not at peace?

I could never be at peace.

_Goodbye, Shoko._

_BdMgSbDmGs_

The vision was cut off abruptly and I found myself in the soul room once again. I shook my head and flexed my hands and toes, a little shaken by that lack of feeling I’d experienced in those last moments.

I stared at the sphere in the air for a long while. It was blindingly bright, but for some reason it didn’t hurt my eyes to look at. “So I was Shoko in a past life,” I said eventually. Marshall didn’t answer for a while, so I went on. “Her death wasn’t an accident.”

I looked over at Marshall to catch him shaking his head. “All part of the plan,” he said.

“Why did she have to die like that? Why couldn’t you have just put the spell on her then waited it out? Did… she really have to die? Like that?” I asked.

He nodded. “I had to activate the spell. She had to die holding the pact with the three devils, so that the spell could grow stronger in her later lives,” he said. “The three-hundred years of death after that was a surprise, though. I underestimated the strength of a star pact, weak as I made it.”

“Does the pact not go away after you die?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’ll always be there, written in your soul. Pacts don’t just run skin deep, you know.”

I nodded. “I guess I understand that,” I said. “What were you doing at the end, though? It was some sort of spell; I know that much. What did it do?”

“I had to erase Envy’s memory of our fight, and of our mission. She didn’t know any of the important things, nothing about Shoko, but I couldn’t take any risks. Then I had to hide our bodies until we woke up.  It was a very complex perception-altering spell that made us unnoticeable as long as we were dead. I’d explain it to you if you cared about that sort of thing.”

“I see…” I looked down, staring into the reflection of my soul below me.

The reflection.

“Any other questions? You seem to have a lot of them,” Marshall said.

“Why didn’t Shoko’s soul have a reflection?” I mumbled. Marshall stiffened by my side. I looked up at him. His jaw was clenched and his pupils were blown wide. “Why does my soul have a reflection, when Shoko’s didn’t?”

Marshall was quiet for a minute. “It’s not yours,” he finally replied. “It’s mine.”

I looked harder at it, noting the differences. The ribbons were darker, a more violet shade, and there was only one color. The glowing circle at the center was dimmer, grayer, even.

“It’s because you linked us. In your pact,” he said. “‘Binding two souls,’ you said. So here we are. Bound. Reflected.”

“What’s that? In the center of the circle there,” I asked, referring to a blobby symbol; I couldn’t quite make it out, but it was definitely there.

Marshall’s widened for less than a moment, barely hinting at his disbelief.

“It’s a star.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow wow wow okay that was a lot of veRY IMPORTANT PLOT INFORMATION.  
> IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU TELL ME ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE SO THAT I CAN EXPLAIN IT FURTHER IN THE NEXT CHAPTER. I know it was sort of information overload, so it’s chill if you have any questions for me.


	19. The Devil is a Tragic Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The soliloquy is a form of writing inspired by its mother form the Mega Soliloquy, which can be viewed here in this chapter update.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter consists of over 2000 words of backstory written in dialogue so you had better prepare your anus.  
> TW mentions of suicide, death, depression, and drug use

I didn’t expect to be covered in sweat and blood when I came back to reality but life never ceased to surprise me. Marshall slid my ring back onto my thumb then stood to press a button in the wall that uncovered a sink and mirror. He dampened a towel—a white towel, why did it have to be white—and handed it over to me. Marshall’s arms were sliced up to his elbows so there was no telling what I looked like.

“How bad is it?” I asked, wincing as I wiped off my hands and neck.

“Your face is fine,” he answered. “I think I’ll be paying for sheets.”

I looked down at red bleeding across white. Everything was white, here. Why did they have to choose white?

“And the shirt is done for, too. I’m pretty sure it used to be gray.”

“Shit,” I said. “I don’t guess there’s a shower anywhere that I can get to without looking extremely suspicious?”

“Honey, this is a train, not a five star hotel.”

I sighed. “Just help me get out of this thing, then,” I said, starting to peel the shirt away from my skin.

“Lift your arms,” he told me, and I obliged, muscles feeling stiff. He lifted the shirt off of me and I started patting down my torso and the tops of my legs with the towel.

“Ugh, this is so gross,” I complained, standing to get at the backs of my thighs.

“Waste of a good meal,” Marshall said, wetting another towel.

“Careful, Marshall. Your priorities are showing.”

I could actually hear his eyes roll.

I jumped when I felt his hands moving my hair out of the way so that he could dab the blood off of my back.

I stopped myself from some snide remark about him just licking my skin clean, instead settling for “Thanks.”

Marshall froze for a moment I almost didn’t notice. “You’re welcome,” he grumbled in reply.

We finished cleaning up and Marshall helped me wrap up my arms and torso so if my cuts reopened I wouldn’t bleed on my clothes. We stripped the sheets off of the bed and apparently there was a God because the mattress below somehow wasn’t stained. I sat down and leaned against the wall, sighing heavily. Marshall sat down next to me.

“So I was Shoko in a past life, huh,” I said.

“You shared the same core, yes,” he replied.

“And the place we were just in. That was my soul room— _our_ ,” I caught myself, “soul room.”

“It was.”

“You know I was wondering, why was your ribbon all one color? Are you just a first generation soul?” I asked.

“Yes—well—no, not quite. Sons are sort of a special case, but you are, too. Most people only have one strand at a time; see, it’s the core that’s really the heart of the soul, the big white sphere that you saw, that passes from person to person. So you can’t really tell just by looking at it how many cycles it’s been through. After a person dies, the ribbon sort of… disappears. No, more like it’s absorbed into the soul’s core.”

“So was it because of that spell that you put on Shoko, on me, that I still have all of my ribbons.”

“That’s right.”

“So what about the Sons, then?” I asked.

Marshall sighed, leaning forward on his elbows with his hands over his mouth. “Sons’ souls don’t work in the same way that regular souls do. We fancy scholars of the magical world like to call it a ‘makeshift core.’ Our soul takes parts of different souls and stitches them together. It has a lot to do with where we’re born and who our mother is. We actually steal a portion of our mothers’ souls when we’re born.”

“That sounds kind of terrible,” I said.

Marshall laughed grimly. “Yeah. So it’s sort of a new soul and an old soul at the same time. Then there’s the cycles. Our souls don’t move from host to host like others, and our ‘ribbons’ don’t break off whenever we die. Just pause. Wait. Play again. Technically I guess I’d be on my eighteenth cycle.”

“So you’re immortal right down to the very core.”

“I guess we are.” Marshall ran a hand through his hair, sitting back and staring up at the ceiling. “What I wouldn’t give to be able to start over,” he said, unreadable expression in his eyes. “Two-thousand years is a long time to be alive.”

I nodded, but I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything.

We sat side-by-side on the empty bed for a little while. It was a lot to process, so I just let my mind wander, following the stories of other people that were buzzing in my head. A man in a town we’d just passed was having a fight with his daughter about something trivial. A woman on the train was impatiently waiting for the bathroom, which apparently hadn’t opened for at least ten minutes. Bonnie and Marcie were playing cards again.

“What’re you thinking about?” Marshall asked.

“Don’t you know?” I said.

He shrugged. “Wasn’t paying attention. Lots of noise.”

I hummed in agreement. “It’s probably the same stuff you’re listening to. The daily lives of everyone in the multiverse.”

“Yeah, I guess. That woman by the bathroom is thinking pretty loud,” he said, laughing spitefully. “You’ll never get bored anymore.”

“I guess not.” Marshall didn’t say anything. “So is that all you do in your free time? No hobbies? I know you read and write spells and things.”

“That’s about it,” he said. “Read, write spells, avoid people, brood.”

“Until you get hungry.”

“I have to be pretty desperate.”

“Do you ever do anything else? Watch movies? Listen to music?”

Marshall scowled. “No. I hate music.”

“ _What_?” I spun around to face him so fast I pulled a muscle in my neck. “You don’t like music? Why not?”

“Noise.”

“Noise,” I repeated.

“There’s always so much noise. Why add to it.”

“Tell me you at least used to listen to music, when you were younger.”

Marshall smirked. “I did. I used to play guitar, or at least, the guitar equivalent of, oh, fifteen-hundred years ago.” Nostalgia flooded his expression for a moment and I frowned sympathetically. “I sang, too. Had a little group of friends that I’d perform with sometimes. It was nice. I miss music.” He caught me staring and flashed me a smile. “I wish that I could like it again. Kaugomme is a fan of modern Earth music. He was humming Taylor Swift earlier.”

I snickered at that. “For some reason I’m not even surprised by that.”

Marshall’s expression fell suddenly as a myriad of emotions passed through his eyes. “I haven’t missed music in a long time,” he admitted. “I didn’t even remember liking it, not until just now.”

“You don’t really reminisce a whole lot, do you?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not willingly.”

“It’s not always good to ignore the past,” I said.

“If you knew about my past you might rethink that statement.”

“Well, I don’t know about it,” I said. “So maybe you should tell me.”

He frowned. “Sounds like you forcing me to reminisce.”

“Sounds like me trying to get to know you better,” I countered, a little exasperatedly. “All we’ve ever done since I met you is argue and fuck, and that was all well and good before, but I’m stuck to you now so I think it’s only right that I get to know who I’m really dealing with, here.”

Marshall wouldn’t look me in the eyes. “You’ll just see it as a ploy for sympathy.”

“I bet you’re wrong.”

“I bet I’m right.”

“We’re not doing this again.”

Marshall allowed himself the smallest of smiles, barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Fine,” he said. “You asked for it. Get ready for the sappiest of sob stories.”

“I can’t wait.”

Marshall took a deep breath.

“I was born about 2000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East—my mother was there on business, something having to do with Jesus or something, while pregnant with the devil’s child and all; it was very ironic. My mother hated me from the day I was conceived, and who could blame her? I was the offspring of her rapist, after all.” Marshall’s voice stayed level and almost emotionless. His eyes were vacant. “She tried to kill me a few times. The first successful attempt was when I was eight, with the dogs, but after she figured out that I couldn’t stay dead for long, she sent me away.” He paused, shifting his gaze up, bouncing his knee nervously. “To the North Pole, in fact. She left me there to waste away. At that point I was unaware of any magic that I had, so I had no way of knowing that I could save myself. I don’t know if I ever died there. I don’t think the cold is capable of killing me, but I was out there for a while. I don’t know how long it was until Simone found me.” Marshall almost smiled; his knee stilled.

“You’ve met Simone,” he said, eyes shining. “The old witch in the north. She took care of me until I was old enough to return the favor. She’s the one that helped me discover my magic, and the one who taught me about spell-writing. She knew that I was a Son of Lucifer, but she never brought it up, never held it against me. I wonder if she even cared.” The glimmer in Marshall’s eyes that faded. “When I was around fifty, I decided that I wanted to see more of the world. Simone and I started traveling. We met many tribes of Native American peoples, learned their cultures and beliefs; I think that was my favorite part of our travels.” Marshall grimaced. “Sucks that most of them died out a thousand years later,” he added wryly. “After a while, I don’t remember how long, we returned to the north and I stayed with her for another few years, until I decided I wanted to see more of the world than just one universe. I had Simone send me to Midnaught after that, and that was the first time I met my father.

“It was nothing special. There was no great battle or screaming fight, he just noticed me and said hello. ‘You must be Mahrsaella,’ he said to me. ‘I’m your father, Pride. It’s nice to finally meet you. I hope you’ll join me for dinner sometime.’ Then he left without another word, and I didn’t see him again. Not that I had the chance to, anyway. When I was around 300 my mother had finally caught word that I was out in the world and making myself known. She was surprised, to say the least, and reacted as any good mother would by arresting me and locking me up in her prisons in Ordolholm.”

Suddenly, Marshall laughed. I jumped.

“It’s funny,” he said, “that for 300 years, it actually hadn’t occurred to me how much my mother really, truly hated me. How much she _must_ have hated me to try and have me killed and exiled. She must have been furious to hear that I was alive and well, so mad that she sent her men out to First City—which, don’t get me wrong, was barely more than a large village at the time—to come collect me so that she could _personally_ expend the effort to hold me up in a cell and torture me.”

Marshall’s face fell, sobering, then something resembling hurt ghosted across his features for less than a moment. “I’m sorry. I have lots of dreams about my time in prison there. It was… hard. That was when I…” Marshall paused, taking time to think out every word. “Um, that was when the depression started. There was, ah, a lot of drug use—er—drug _ab_ use. They had spells on all the cages—and I call them _cages_ —that stopped you from getting out or even thinking straight so everything was foggy and distorted _all_ the time. I was there for about 200 years.” He let that sink in for a moment, though whether it was for him or me I wasn’t sure. “It was then that I started thinking a lot about my father. And I thought about my mother a lot, too. About why she hated me so much. And I wrote a lot of spells during that time. I didn’t have any pen or paper, so I would scratch them into the walls of my cell. There were torture spells, mostly. I wrote a few for getting high. Some other stupid ones, too, like one for turning your hair into grass, and another for making people perceive other people as having no eyebrows. That one is actually pretty funny. I’ll have to tell you that story another time.”

I snorted a little when he said that and he snickered at the sound I made. “Please do,” I said.

He smiled at me then turned away again, staring into the mirror across the room. “And then one day these two guys showed up outside my cell. And they looked like fucking angels; everything is so dank and dirty in a dungeon, you know, so when these guys come in dressed for some fancy dinner or something, I wasn’t entirely sure I wasn’t hallucinating them. And they just touched the bars I was behind and they melted, all the spells keeping me inside breaking at once, and I felt this haze in my head start to lift and I looked at them and looked into their eyes and I knew that they were Sons, too. I wasn’t sure how they’d heard about me; my imprisonment was supposed to be kept under the rug, but there they were, waltzing in without breaking a sweat, busting my sorry ass out of prison.”

Marshall’s eyes hardened, glaring into his reflection. “My mother knew about it. That was the only way they’d ever be allowed to get away with it. She let them.”

Marshall rubbed his temples and pushed a hand through his hair. “They told me they were going to kill my—our—father, but they needed some help. They needed a brain, a tactician. They’d heard about my talent, by voices on the wind, I suppose, and so I agreed, anything to get out of that place. We made a run for Aelfie.” Marshall sensed my confusion and explained. “It’s an odd realm, not a lot of tech, not much variation in landscape. Really interesting people, though.” He looked at me and I nodded him on. “I started on the spell for the ‘symbiotic victim’ pact, which was the prototype to that one that you saw with Shoko earlier. At that point I figured that we were most interested in a battery, which is sort of the idea behind having you as a pact-holder now, only you have added bonuses. And so after spending a century sorting through spells, we began the arduous process of finding a suitable pact-holder, which was really just a few more centuries of me dicking around and pissing off the wrong people and getting killed a few times.”

 Marshall’s eyebrows pulled together at the mention of his death. I could tell he didn’t really want to talk about it, even though it didn’t come across in his tone. “It was around the fifth time, maybe, that I started noticing it, that sort of imbalance in my head. It started with small things, intrusive thoughts and random blips of sympathy. It was a bit frightening at first, but I brushed it off. It was easy enough to ignore” Marshall’s eyes looked distant, clouded and dark maroon. “By the eighth time I felt the fog start to settle. It was familiar, similar to what I felt being under that suppression spell back in prison, only noisier.” The corners of his mouth twitched downwards. He opened his mouth once and closed it again, looking reluctant. “I’d never really stopped using in the time between prison and then, but that was when it started to get bad again. I was in an off-and-on relationship with Kaugomme at the same time, all physical, but I started to call him up more and more. By the ninth time, I thought maybe it was something that had a limit. Maybe it could only happen so many times. Tenth time’s the charm, right? And when I woke up after then, I thought maybe, surely there was another way around it.”

Marshall laughed suddenly, again. I jumped, again.

“I wanted to be dead,” he said. “And at that point it was just curiosity, you know. What would it be like to be dead? Where would I go? Would I remember anything from this life? And these questions just kept gnawing at me and I thought maybe if I was the one to do it, maybe if I tried hard enough, I could do it.” He shook his head. “I’m so selfish. I buried a bullet in my brain, just to see what would happen, just hoping I wouldn’t wake up, just ignoring my responsibilities to this world. I put a spell on that bullet meant to melt my brain. Maybe if I destroyed that, it would destroy everything, you know?” My throat suddenly felt tight and I saw Marshall swallow like he felt the same way. “And then I woke up, just a week later. A _week_. And I was still the same person with the same thoughts and memories and I remember I woke up and for maybe the second time in my stupid fucking life I cried.” Marshall closed his eyes and propped his head up on his fists.

“And I sort of gave up, after that. I stopped really looking for a pact holder, just filled my veins with anything that wasn’t my blood and hoped that the ringing in my ears would stop and that I could stop hearing every little thing that everyone thought. Seeing Gomme was always a relief, because he had such quiet thoughts. He didn’t think in a voice, just pictures and feelings and sometimes written words. He was so quiet.” Marshall laughed again in a voice that sounded more like a sob. “But of course I had to fuck that up, too. I couldn’t let myself be happy with that. I had to fucking change that. I had to fuck him up. I had to go and be so _fucking_ selfish and see him as an opportunity instead of a goddamn person. He was a fucking _person_.” Marshall’s hands were clenched tight and his knuckles went white. His arms were so tense he was almost shaking from the effort. I placed a hand on his shoulder and he froze before shrugging me off and relaxing his grip.

“That was the thirteenth time,” he said. “I was out for a year. Gomme woke up after a week. I guess that’s the time it takes to repair a brain, you know. But it was different that time, for me. It wasn’t just black and nothing. I saw pictures that time, sometimes, of a floating ball of gray light and smudges of violet. And I didn’t know what it was but when I woke up it stuck with me. It was different. I started looking for the answers and reading texts and I found out about it, about the soul room. I’d never heard of it before, never really thought so much about the construction of souls, and I knew I needed more information. I dug up everything I could find about reincarnation and cycles and memories, and that’s why I didn’t try again. Because I knew that I really couldn’t die, then. I found out more about Lucifer, too, and I realized that the pact that I had designed wouldn’t be enough, even with the three of us working together. I had to design something that ran deeper that skin and blood, something that could stand up to such perfected evolution, so I created _tati tatu_. After that, finding a potential pact-holder was relatively easy; they didn’t have to be perfect anymore. It just took a century or two to find Shoko, and I guess you know the story from there.”

I stared at him.

All of that information. He’d been speaking for what had to be at least twenty minutes, and I felt as though I’d barely scratched the surface of what 2000 years of life could entail. I almost felt like I knew him even less than I did before, like I’d quadrupled the number of questions I had before he started talking, and the thought was more than a little overwhelming for me.

“…It’s a lot to take in,” I finally said.

Marshall sat up, wincing a little at me. “Hope I didn’t bore you. I tried to keep to the major stuff.”

“I don’t know how you could even think that was boring. That ride was wild from start to finish.”

“I suppose so,” he said.

Marshall stared into his lap, looking a little ruffled. “You know,” I said, “for someone that oozes condescension and egocentricism most of the time, you’re pretty insecure.”

“Seems out of character, doesn’t it?” Marshall said, smirking. “I am doomed to a life of hearing and feeling the impressions that I leave on others. It would be so much easier not to care.”

“You’re rash enough that it seems like you don’t.”

“I’m a good actor.”

“Except for right now.”

“Except for right now,” he repeated. He leaned back to lay out on the bed, crossing his arms behind his head. “I don’t like to admit it, but I’m kind of relieved.”

“About what?”

“About you making that stupid pact.”

“Yeah?”

“It feels good to talk about it sometimes.”

“You’ve never talked about it before?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“Really?”

“Can’t lie to you, remember?”

“Right.”

After a moment, I leaned back, too, crossing my hands behind my head and staring into the ceiling with him. So this was what I was stuck to. This body that seemed so composed was over-stuffed with memories and splitting at the seams.

It was almost like he was suddenly real. Before his life was a vague impression but all of a sudden there were words to go with feelings and a timeline to follow and he had a life and memories and reasons to go with actions and it was real. And it was better than it was before. He was real. He was a person.

“You know, even though you might not like it, this is your life. It’s yours. This is the one that you have, and it’s probably the only one you’re gonna get, so maybe all you can do is try to make the most of it,” I said.

He laughed. “You sound like my old friend again. He used to say those exact words.”

I smiled. “Maybe he was on to something, then.”

And maybe, it would be okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh what a nice chapter. So many emotions crammed into one.   
> So for actually seriously tho if anyone is kind of like “wtf what is going on” about anything in this shitstorm, let a brother know. I’m happy to answer questions and if it seems like I just did a shitty job of explaining things I can clarify things in other chapters. As the author I actually have the power to do that. So don’t let yourself suffer in confusion. Please.
> 
> I’m halfway through my second semester now, and then SUMMER BREAK. For 2 weeks before going to China for 2 months. But hey I mean fanfiction isn’t blocked in China so I should be able to keep up some updates while I’m there yo. Thanks again for reading! Review to save a life!


	20. Into First City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I know it’s been like 5 months but guys hear me out.  
> Finals.  
> And China.

“How do you feel about me?” Marshall asked.

I shot him a questioning glance. “Where did this come from?” I said.

He shrugged. “I just revealed myself as being sort of a manipulative asshole to you since before the beginning of your existence. I figured you might have an opinion.”

I laughed a little. “Well, mister manipulative asshole, if you wanna know so bad, why not find out yourself?” I asked.

“I want you to tell me.”

“Is this a test?”

He gave me a look.

I hardened my mouth into a flat line and stared out the window where it was nearing late afternoon. I’d been in Marshall’s room all day. He’d gone out to fetch me a fresh set of clothes after sharing his life story, and afterwards we spent most of the day in a companionable silence, him reading and me alternating between getting lost in thought and napping. I probably wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep if I only slept at the same time as Marshall, so I took advantage of my last free day of travel.

I still hadn’t answered his question.

“I have to say it’s… a strange mixture of resentment and awe,” I said.

Marshall leaned back in his chair and smiled. “That’s better than what I expected,” he admitted.

“It’s kind of hard to hate you when you’re so,” _Striking? Imposing? Notable?_  “Impressive.”

He let out a small laugh. “Stroke my ego a little more, would you?” he said.

I spared him an eye roll. “And believe me, I want to hate you, I really do. It feels _wrong_ not hating you. But knowing where you’re coming from, being in your head and all… it just wouldn’t feel right, either.”

He hummed like he understood my emotional turmoil, as much as I totally didn’t. “I think you’re naïve,” he said.

I scoffed. “Who asked you?”

“You were going to. Probably.” He shrugged, continuing answering the question I didn’t ask: “You’re naïve, and you’re hardheaded, and you’re impulsive.”

“You’re just making accusations about my personality,” I jabbed.

He smirked. “And you’re witty, generous and selfless, optimistic, perhaps to a fault.”

“How can you accuse me of being both naïve and witty?” I said.

He ignored me. “That being, said, I don’t dislike you.”

“Wow, I’m really feeling the love, here.”

“I dislike a lot of people. You should feel honored not to be on that list.”

My head dropped to my palm. “You really know all the right things to say, don’t you?”

“So I’ve been told.” Marshall crossed his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “And what about my brothers?”

I decided not to be upset about him ignoring my sarcasm. “How do I feel about them?” I asked. He nodded. “I guess I like them.”

“Which is more than can be said about me,” Marshall noted.

“Well, no, it’s different. I know you better,” I said.

“Which made me less likeable?”

“Oh, trust me, it didn’t.”

He smiled. “Then what do you mean?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just different. I haven’t really thought of it much. I don’t have as much of an opinion about them than I do for you, I guess.”

“I thought at least you and Infernus had talked a lot.”

“I guess we have,” I said. “It’s like I know _about_ them but I don’t _know_ them.”

Marshall stayed silent, staring thoughtfully past me. An odd feeling of sympathy stirred uncomfortably in my chest.

“Do _you_ even know them?” I asked.

A strong pang of emotions ripped through me for a moment and vanished instantly. Marshall looked irritated, but it wasn’t directed at me.

“I don’t know if I do,” he said. He opened his mouth like he was going to go on, but closed it again.

“What about Gomme?”

“Don’t talk about him.” He answered too quickly. “And don’t you dare ask me why. You know exactly why.”

Did I really know exactly why?

“I guess,” I decided to backtrack, “I feel sorry that they’re sort of left out of the loop in all this. That probably has something to do with it, how I feel about them, I mean. I feel like I can’t really get to honestly know someone without first being honest with them. People change depending on who you are with them, you know.”

“Do you want to tell them?”

“What?”

Marshall finally looked at me. “About the plan. My years of plotting. Do you want to tell them?”

“I… I don’t know—”

“Do you trust them?” Marshall asked.

I stopped.

Did I trust them?

“Do you?” I asked.

“Not for a fucking second,” he hissed. I raised my eyebrow at him. “It’s the liar’s way of thinking, I think. Honest people believe everyone is honest, liars believe everyone’s a liar.”

I turned away from him and stared at the mirror across the room as the irony of what he said soaked in. Here was a man with access to the thoughts and feelings of the entire world, the entire multiverse, and not an ounce of trust for anything that he heard or felt. A self-proclaimed liar that can supposedly only speak the truth, at least to me, but with no actual concept of what “truth” really is. Who was he to observe a question of trust when he had no idea what trusting actually meant?

“So do you trust them?” he asked again.

And really, who was I to give him an answer? “I do. I really think I do.”

“Okay. Then we’ll tell them,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows again. “Are you serious?”

He looked at me. “Dead serious.” I felt something tug inside of me, a feeling that wasn’t my own forcing its way into my body, but still as legitimate as an emotion that I felt, myself. It was a familiar sensation.

“You’ve been keeping this secret from them for the better part of a thousand years.”

“I have. So when I tell them, their reactions are on you.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “That’s some sort of twisted logic, but okay.” I frowned. “So when will you tell them?”

“Once we settle into Second City. I expect we’ll have to stay there for a while as arrangements are made for us to travel to the inner circles. There’ll be time, then.”

A jingle played over the train’s intercom as the conductor came on. “ _Attention, passengers. We will be arriving at First City Station in approximately one hour. Please prepare for arrival, thank you._ ”

Marshall and I shared a long look.

“What do you think they’ll say, when you tell them?” I asked.

“I think they’ll resent me,” he answered.

“Do you think they’ll try to leave?”

“I think they don’t really have a choice in the matter.”

“What if they try to stop you?”

Marshall barked out a single laugh. “They already know they can’t.”

I dared to look out the window then, as opposed to giving him a real answer. Over the ridge I saw a vast expanse of metal, a glowing city stretching out beyond my eye’s reach in all directions. In the distance a shadow crept upward, growing darker the higher it reached and blotting out the sky.

_BdMgSbDmGs_

We disembarked at First City Station, which Marshall told me was not actually the most populated station of the city, but still one of the bigger stations in Sector 7 (apparently the city was divided into seven main sections that served to help organize the districts. Sector 7 was the fashion and beauty district.) From First City Station we would walk to another local station that could take us deeper into the city to the Second City checkpoint. Inside Second City, Marshall had arranged a place for us to stay for however long was necessary before getting into the inner districts.

The station was incredibly crowded for what was supposedly a less-popular station. We followed Marshall through a haze of strange and unfamiliar faces that left me feeling incredibly out of place. I’d never seen so many different shades of hair and skin, ranging from pastel pink to vivid blue to dingy green. People looked at me and grimaced, quickly looking away. I shrank away from their glances and tried to ignore the whispers in my head.

“Is the station close?” Marcie muttered in Marshall’s direction, glaring out at the passersby. “I don’t like the looks we get here.”

“Sector 7 isn’t much one for outsiders, especially in big groups,” he replied. “It’s just a couple blocks down.”

“Thank God,” I said, earning a few more glares my way.

Marshall chuckled darkly. “Best not to mention God around here.”

I shrank into myself even more. “Noted.”

We exited the station and walked out into a shining city. Above I could see more roads and sidewalks built, and occasionally a building hanging midair. It looked like something out of science fiction. The streets were organized and immaculate; markings on the nearly transparent sidewalk for which side was for walking and which was for bikes and scooters, or whatever the First City equivalent was, stop sign holograms that blocked the streets when it wasn’t safe to cross, not a single piece of trash on the ground, and no visible trash cans to hint where it was supposed to go anyway.

The city felt like an enormous machine, buzzing with artificial life. The streets moved of their own accord, sidewalks shifting at intersections, doors opening and closing, advertisements flashing in buildings above our hands. I could barely process the, often flashy but actually quite varied, fashion and… body enhancement (was it?) that I saw in the windows of the stores that we passed by. Signs on the doors changed as different people passed by, almost like they were being read and advertised to directly. I felt horribly out of place, staring wide-eyed at everything we passed like some kid at an aquarium, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop.

Marshall’s amusement at me was rolling off of him. I could almost hear Marshall chuckling in my head. I tactfully ignored him, casting my gaze to the shops to my right where I met the eyes of a lavender-skinned man. He stared at me with wide brown eyes, his jaw dropping a little, face shape somehow reminding me a little of—

“Fionna?”

I stopped in my tracks when I recognized his voice. _His_ voice? It was a little lower and gruffer than usual, but… _No, it can’t be. That definitely sounded like_ —

“ _Lola_?”

“SHH!” they said, nearly leaping on top of me to put their hand over my mouth. “ _Lucas_. It’s _Lucas_ , here. Omigod, Fionna do you have any idea what would happen if they found out about me here?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I near-shouted, staring at this “man” that was so entirely Lola and yet so entirely _not_ and now they were talking to me like I’d just revealed some huge secret that I didn’t even know I was keeping.

“Fionna, who are you—?” Marcie cut herself off the moment she looked at not-Lola’s face. “L—?”

“ _Lucas_ ,” I said. “Lucas, you know, our friend from back at home.”

Bonnie stepped forward and exchanged a glance with Bonnie, jaw set and eyebrows raised. “Lucas!” she said. “You look… how did you end up in First City? I didn’t know you were… not human.”

“My parents own, like, a beauty company that operates out of here; it’s a big, complicated story,” Lucas explained. “More importantly, what are _you_ doing here?”

Marshall took that moment to walk back to us, casting Lucas a level gaze. Immediately Lucas straightened up like someone shoved a rod in his back. “Mahrsaella Leeh Abadeer,” he said.

Marshall cocked an eyebrow at him. “So you’ve heard of me,” he said.

Lucas’s expression turned to panic as he directed his gaze back at me. “ _Fionna_. Don’t tell me you got in bads with _this_ guy,” he murmured.

“Trust me, it is so much more complicated than that,” I responded, equally enthused.

I felt a certain darkness settle at the edges of my vision that reminded me of my first encounter with Marshall, probably because he was using the same perception-altering magic. The skin of my wrists tingled with the feeling of claws ghosting across them, not hard enough to pierce the skin but growing harder with each pass.

“We have business in the inner circles, but we’ll be needing a pass to get past the checkpoints at Second City, which we have yet to obtain for obvious reasons,” Marshall said. He lilted his head slightly, highlighting the soft red glow of his eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re in a position to help us with that?”

I gave Marshall a hard look. _Don’t mind-control my friends_ , I thought strongly toward him.

I felt him resist the urge to roll his eyes. _Trust me, this chick doesn’t need to have her brain poked to help us out_ , he thought back.

Lucas looked at me and gritted his teeth. “We have a factory in Fifth City. Tell me where you’re staying tonight and I can meet with you, like, tomorrow morning to discuss how to get you in.”

Marshall narrowed his eyes and nodded. “I look forward to it.”

My vision returned to normal and Marshall stared at Lucas for a while—I assumed an information exchange was taking place—before nodding and turning away. “We’ll be late for our train,” Marshall said as he started walking in the opposite direction. Lucas’s eyes didn’t leave us until we were well out of sight.

I felt an uneasiness stirring in my chest and I realized after a moment that it was coming from Marshall.

_What is it?_

_Change of plans._

_Which plans?_

_We’re out of time._

_To?_

_I have to tell them tonight._

_You’re going to tell them?_

_You want me to. I don’t have any choice._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trans* LSP gives me life.
> 
> So long story short the last few weeks of college were hell, I had 2 weeks to move out of dorms and go home then immediately pack for China for an 8 week study abroad program (which was very fun but at the same time was incredibly difficult and made me very unstable) and then I went straight from China to Tokyo for 2 weeks to visit my sister. I just got home again and decided I needed to be getting my ass in gear, so here I am. It’s a relatively short chapter, but at least it exists??
> 
> Also I drew this. http://sexythewalkingcatfish.tumblr.com/post/116669656504/marshall-kaugomme-and-infernus-from-bad
> 
> Thanks for anybody that’s still out there, and sorry if you guys totally forgot what was going on in this story or something ad were just really confused this whole chapter. I UNDERSTAND. AGAIN I APOLOGIZE.  
> Thank you all for reading~


	21. The Devil is an Honest Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time on Bad Decisions Make Great Stories that Never Fucking Update: The gang makes it to First City, Marshall and Fionna talk about FeelingsTM, they meet “”Lucas”” who says he can get them into Fifth City, and Marshall promises to spill his secrets to everyone even though he thinks it’s a terrible idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahh... hi

Their eyes were everywhere except for us. Infernus clenched his hands so tight that his knuckles went white, eyes glowing as they nearly burned a hole in the ground (literally). Kaugomme kept making eyes at the door like he wanted to leave. Bonnie and Marcie seemed more concerned than anything else, exchanging glances with each other when they weren't staring warily at Marshall's brothers.

He'd kept a calm face all through his confession. I'd barely felt any stir of emotion in him at all, almost like his feelings were turned off. His gaze was level as he waited for the reactions to sink in.

I wasn't even surprised when I saw Infernus lunge at him. It was sudden, but something in the way his face clouded over at the mention of Shoko's name told me that he wouldn't let Marshall go lightly.

The shock of blond hair and glowing yellow eyes were slightly unexpected, on the other hand, as was the puff of fire that came from his mouth as he exhaled, holding Marshall up by the throat and squeezing. His hands were like molten lava on Marshall's skin, sinking into his flesh at an alarming rate.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Infernus hissed. “ _Fuck_ you, heartless, worthless bastard.”

“What are you gonna do,” Marshall choked out, “kill me?”

Infernus squeezed tighter and suddenly it was _my_ throat under his fingers and _my_ skin being set aflame but when I grasped at my neck to pull his hands away there was nothing there and my skin seemed fine, so then why did I _feel_ the pain so powerfully?

And Infernus figured it out in the same moment I did, that Marshall was projecting on me, whether he meant to or not, but the look in his eyes spelled manipulation and for a moment I was as angry as Infernus was.

He released him with a face of disgust then looked into Marshall's eyes as he spit in his face, heading to storm out of the room when Kaugomme caught him by his hand. Infernus gave him a malicious look but Gomme set him with a viciously sturdy gaze of his own.

“Can I recap?” Gomme asked, gently directing Infernus to sit back down next to him.

“Please,” Marshall said, wiping off his face.

“So some 1400 years ago you perfected a—what did you call it, the _symbiotic victim_ —spell that required some perfect person to be pact-holder, but instead of really trying to be useful, you just fucked around for a couple hundred years,” Gomme started.

“So far so good,” Marshall said.

“And fucking around involved you getting yourself killed a lot which started this sort of vicious cycle of feeling sorry for yourself, fucking around and getting killed, waking up and feeling shitty again…”

“Side-effects, yes,” Marshall said, expertly hiding the strain in his voice that I could sense he wanted to let go.

“And then after a couple of centuries doing _that_ and then some, you suddenly started supposedly getting these visions of the, ah, ‘soul room,’ and that’s where you started to change tactics without telling us.”

Marshall nodded.

“So then you got _inspired._ You realized you didn’t have to be so specific about who the pact-holder would be. You just needed someone that would go along with. So then here comes Shoko,” I noticed Infernus immediately tense at the name, “and you picked her for her magic or something? She had to be believable, I guess. You had to make her at least _seem_ special so we wouldn’t question it. Of _course_ it took almost five-hundred years to find this one-armed sympathy magic nomad. There’s no one else in the multiverse like her. So you created this _other_ pact with her, what, directly on the fabric of her soul? Which _definitely_ doesn’t sound crazy.”

“It’s complicated, but basically,” Marshall said.

“And then you just had to wait it out. But you didn’t want us to know, because you’re _you_ and you decided to be selfish and untrusting and choose the possibility of keeping your own ass safe instead of, I don’t know, using your brain to _think_ about the consequences that your actions have on other people for once.”

“Right again.”

“And then you killed us all.”

“To be fair—”

“You are _so_ beyond the point where you can use the word ‘fair’ with us, Marshall,” Gomme spat.

“I didn’t expect the pact would be powerful enough to keep us dead for that long. And for any… adverse effects that that prolonged death experience might have had on you, I…” Marshall hesitated.

“You _what_ , Marshall? What could you possibly say to me that will undo the three-hundred years of nothingness that I had to live through? What could you say to me that will give me back three-hundred years of lost time? What could you _ever_ say to me that will turn my magic off for me, so that I don’t have to think out each, individual heartbeat because my body forgot how to do it on its own?  What could you say? _What would you dare say to me, Marshall_?” Gomme’s fists pounded on the table in front of him and by some miracle it didn’t break.

Marshall’s composure faltered for a moment but he recovered almost instantly. “I was going to say I’m sorry,” he said.

Gomme’s hands relaxed and he stared at them for a moment, slowly leaning back into his seat. His gaze shifted up to me, mouth hanging open slightly before he picked up where he left off. “And then there’s you. You’re the wild card in all of this,” he said, calmly, like the outburst from before had never happened.

I clenched my jaw at the emptiness in his face, his violet eyes hollow.

“You’re nothing like her. You don’t have the sense she had. But you have this heart. And maybe it’s because your head is human and you don’t know any better. But you see this bag of cats in Marshall’s head and you think you can just _fix_ that. And you took half of the cats in Marshall’s bag and put them in your own, as though that’s gonna change the fact that now you’re _both_ fucking crazy, on top of being this one super brain with two bodies and two half-full bags of cats.”

Both Marshall and I winced at that. I felt him glance at me, but I didn’t have the nerve to turn my eyes from Gomme.

“But at the same time, you taking some of the crazy out of Marshall’s head somehow gave him half the sense he needed to tell us what the fuck has been going on for all these centuries, and honestly I’m still trying to figure out if that’s _better_ or not, though I can’t say I think I was better off _not_ knowing, as much as being lied to for all these years makes me want you two dead.”

I flinched at that and he noticed, expression softening with a bit of worry.

“Shit, no, I mean,” he fumbled, senses starting to return to him. “Sorry, that came out wrong. Fuck.”

I nodded my head, hoping he would take it as noting his apology.

“There’s one thing I’m missing from all of this, though,” Infernus said softly, like he wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to start speaking again.

“And that is?” I said.

“What makes Fionna special? How does us having Fionna change this?” he said. “How does Fionna kill the devil?”

Marshall had carefully replaced his mask of indifference, though I still felt uneasiness coming off of him. “It’s the way the spell is written on Fionna’s soul. She is the weapon that we must use to destroy Pride, as well as its wielder.”

“And what does that mean, exactly?” Gomme urged on.

“I plan on taking the spell that I wrote into Fionna’s soul and changing it into the form of something physical, like a weapon. Because it is so personalized to her, of course, only she can wield it. Pride must be killed by Fionna’s hand.”

“Then what, exactly, did you need us around for, again?” Infernus spat.

“The spell gets stronger the more pacts the holder has.” Marshall smirked. “And what better way to draw out the Devil than to have three of his sons out sniffing around his domain? Honestly, I believe it’s an opportunity he won’t dare to miss.”

“Bait,” Infernus scoffed. “You needed bait.

Marshall licked his lips and tilted his head back, sinking back in his chair. “Hook, line, and sinker.”

_BdMgSbDmGs_

There was a nervous tap on the door the following morning.I went to open the door, since she figured Lola (or Lucas? She wasn’t sure who they would be today) would appreciate a familiar face being the first one she saw.

And it did end up being Lola that stepped inside. She looked much more comfortable than she had been the day before. I gave her a hug then lead her to a sitting area where everyone had gathered.

Lola skipped the pleasantries, diving straight into business. “I can get you into Fifth City.”

“Explain how,” Marshall said.

“My pops and Greed go way back; they even worked as business partners for a couple years, just until my dad’s company got off the ground. If what I’ve heard is true, they may have some interest in your… initiative.”

Gomme’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding. Fionna, I had no idea you had friends in such high places.”

“Me either,” I muttered.

“So if I may clarify, your father is—”

“The President of Lumps Inc., the Multiverse’s largest, most popular, most reliable body modification enterprise,” Lola finished, almost robotically. “I called my father yesterday. He said he would be interested in meeting with you within the week.”

“I assume he would take care of the pleasantries of getting us in to meet with him,” Marshall said.

Lola nodded. “Just say the word.”

“Wonderful.”

I zoned out a bit while they figured out the details and before I knew it Lola was getting ready to go.

“Wait, Lola,” I said, “can I talk to you for a sec?”

She almost looked like she would say no before she saw the look on my face. “Okay, but just a little.”

I pulled her off to the side for some semblance of privacy, not that I thought anyone (but Marshall) would be listening in, anyway.

“Care to explain why I was talking to, ah, ‘Lucas’ yesterday instead of Lola?” I asked.

Lola crossed her arms self-consciously. “I was afraid that this would come up.”

I put my hands on my hips and waited.

“So even though my dad has, like, the biggest body modification company in the world, he’s a bit… I don’t wanna say transphobic, but…”

My eyebrows pulled together as I waited for her to organize her thoughts.

“Well he _says_ he doesn’t have a problem with it; he’s got a whole line dedicated to transgendered people but, when his son says he’s a _girl_ then suddenly…”

I put my hand on her shoulder and she looked up from where her gaze had drifted to the floor. “It’s okay,” I said. “Even if you have to look and act like Lucas to make your dad happy, you’ll always be Lola to me.”

She smiled, putting her hand over mine on her shoulder. “Thanks, Fionna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that took forever. But to be fair, Gomme’s speech was brilliant.  
> I can’t promise updates will be any faster than they’ve (unfortunately) been. The home stretch is always the hardest, and if I’m going to see this through to the end, I don’t want it to be rushed. But I’m a busy college student now with a busy life and I really just haven’t been writing very much lately, until around the last month.... so we'll see


End file.
